It Took About 200 Developers At Peak Times to Make Armored Core 6 and Elden Ring

You wouldn't call Armored Core 6 or Elden Ring small games but it's difficult to say how big a team should be to develop a project of such a scale. In a recent interview, Armored Core 6's director and producer was asked how big the studio is now and how different teams are organized. 

"We don't expect players to read through the whole staff list at the end of every game and compare who's who," said producer Yasunori Ogura. "To give a broad image, we have just about 400 employees at FromSoftware, and about 300 of those are development staff. That pool of development staff is shifted around, moved between projects as needed, depending on the current situation with a project and the current period of development."

Ogura previously worked in PR and marketing – for example, he helped market Elden Ring. Armored Core 6 became Ogura's first producing role, so he now has a good idea of how the development is organized. 

"At peak times, you'd have up to 200, 230 developers working on Armored Core 6," the producer said. "This was similar to Elden Ring as well. At the peak period of that project, you'd have a similar number of staff working on it simultaneously. So staff is moved around fluidly as and when needed."

Armored Core 5, launched back in 2012, needed about 80 internal dev staff. 10 years later, it appears, the team needs 200-300 developers to launch a game having the Elden Ring's scale.

As for the other games, Diablo, according to a recent report, employed 9,166 individuals who helped develop Blizzard's latest bestseller. A lot of people helped produce audio for the game with 2,464 people working on the game’s sound design and providing voiceovers. 26 people helped capture "Creature Voice Effects". Find more stats here. 

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