Saber Interactive says it no longer has meaningful game-development operations in North America, instead relying on global network of studios that the company believes can produce games at a substantially lower cost. Tim Willits, Saber’s chief creative officer, told GamesIndustry.biz that the company has roughly 3,500 employees across 15 studios around the world, with development teams operating in countries including Serbia, Armenia, Georgia, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Argentina and Australia. Saber remains headquartered in the United States, but Willits said the company no longer has meaningful development operations in North America.
The reasoning is largely financial. Willits argued that large development teams in expensive markets such as California can carry enormous monthly operating costs. He cited a burn rate of more than $2 million per month for large North American development studios, arguing that such expenses can make lengthy AAA production cycles increasingly difficult to justify. Saber’s experience with SnowRunner is central to that argument. Willits said the off-road driving game generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue while costing approximately $6 million to develop. He contrasted that figure with what a large California development operation could spend on salaries over the same period.
Willits also pointed to Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 as an example of Saber’s approach. He claimed the game cost roughly one-third as much as a major North American AAA game released several months earlier while selling 11 million more copies. Because Willits did not identify the other game, the comparison cannot be independently evaluated as a direct game-to-game budget or sales analysis. Saber’s strategy reflects a broader shift in how publishers and developers are thinking about production costs. Rather than concentrating development in traditional industry hubs, companies can distribute teams across regions with different labor and operating costs while still working with international talent.
The approach also follows Saber’s separation from Embracer Group in 2024. Embracer sold selected Saber assets to Beacon Interactive, a company controlled by Saber co-founder Matthew Karch, in a transaction valued at $247 million, with the divestment completed on March 28, 2024. That does not mean North American development is disappearing from the industry, or even that Saber has no North American presence. Saber’s own website currently describes the company as a worldwide publisher and developer with 15 studios in the Americas and Europe. Instead, Willits’s comments highlight a deliberate decision to locate the company’s game-development operations outside the continent.
As major publishers continue to confront rising budgets and lengthy production schedules, Saber’s international model offers an alternative to the traditional assumption that the biggest games must also be developed in the industry’s most expensive markets.