Space Marine 2 dev credits overseas staff for game’s

Saber Interactive has dramatically reduced its North American game development operations in favor of overseas studios, a strategic shift the company credits with boosting profitability on hits like Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2.

Chief creative officer Tim Willits explained to GamesIndustry.biz that Saber now has "no real development in North America any more," despite maintaining its headquarters in Florida and several US-based subsidiaries. The bulk of the studio's development teams are now distributed across Europe, where salary expectations and overall operating costs are substantially lower than in major North American tech hubs.

Willits highlighted the financial disparity between regions by comparing development expenses. Large North American studios typically burn through $2 million or more monthly in salaries alone. He used SnowRunner, which has generated hundreds of millions in revenue, as an example—the game cost just $6 million to produce, equivalent to roughly three months of payroll for a major California-based studio. Scaling that up, a five-year project in North America could easily exceed $120 million in salary costs before accounting for other expenses.

The cost advantage allows Saber to take creative risks that larger, more expensive operations cannot afford. Willits pointed out that some AAA projects require five million copies sold just to break even, forcing publishers toward safer, mainstream designs. By contrast, Saber can target smaller, dedicated audiences who genuinely want specific games.

Space Marine 2 exemplifies this approach. Willits noted the game's development budget was roughly one-third that of a major title released around the same time by a large North American studio, yet Space Marine 2 outsold that competitor by 11 million copies. He emphasized that studios don't need $150 million budgets to generate billion-dollar revenues.

Willits also observed that inefficient spending is rampant in the industry. He described seeing games where development waste is visually apparent, describing the experience as watching "dollars falling out of the monitor." This inefficiency, he suggested, stems partly from the inflated salary structures that North American locations demand.

Saber's cost-conscious approach has enabled its recent success, though the studio has also embraced artificial intelligence in development—a direction that has drawn controversy following the publisher's addition of AI disclosures to Rideshare Simulator and CEO Matt Karch's public dispute with a former writer who claimed she was replaced by ChatGPT.