EA Has Completely Misunderstood What Made Dragon Age: The Veilguard Underperform

By 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Tessa Kaur

Published Feb 6, 2025

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had a strong opening and plenty of hype around its launch, but failed to stick the landing. As reported last month, despite good reviews, The Veilguard reached 1.5 million players across all platforms, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:falling short of𓃲 EA’s expectation♏s by 50 percent. This led to a series of layoffs within BioWare, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:including key developers on both the and series, leaving the studio at 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:half its size from two years prior.

EA Thinks The Veilguard Failed Because It Wasn’t Live Service

To hear EA CEO Andrew Wilson tell it, it’s because The Veilguard wasn’t a live service game. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:During a recent financial call, Wilson said, “In order to break beyond the core audience, games need to directly connect to the evolving demands of players who increasingly seek shared-world features and deeper engagement alon🎃gside high-quality narratives… it did not resonate with a broad-enough audience in this highly competitive market.”

MR Chedda in front of Multiversus and money

MultiVersus Could Never Escape Its Ick F🗹actor

MultiVersus failed, ultimately, because it made itself too difficult 🌞to love.

Posts 168澳♛洲幸运5开奖网: 🀅

Further emphasising the point, EA CFO Stuart Canfield commented, “Historically, blockbuster storytelling has been the primary way our industry has brought beloved IP to players. The game's financial performance 💯highlights the evolving industry landscape and reinforces the importance of our actions to reallocate toward our most significant and highest potential opportunities.” Wilson also noted that 74 percent of EA’s revenue is from live service games, which indicates that the company believes that live service games are the mos🎐t important in its portfolio.

I’m not sure how this squares with the underperformance of , asܫ that series is a de faᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚcto live service that also did poorly.

EA Is Very Wrong

This is completely divorced from what players will tell you was disappointing about The Veilguard. There’s a litany of complaints, all more accurate, that we could attribute its under-performance to: 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:heavy-handed writing, the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:sidelining of religion, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:retconning its own lore, the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:removal of world states, a 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:lack of room to roleplay, a 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:total lack of moral gray areas… I 🐎could go on, we’ve🍰 complained about the game a lot on this website.

A 2024 study says that 168澳洲幸运5开༺奖网:a majority of gamers prefer single-player games.

But perhaps most ironic is that a lot of people believe The Veilguard suffered because it was almost a live service game. Originally conceived as a multiplayer game, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:💙EA pivoted the series back to single-player (which BioWare is obviously more familiar with) after its previous live service project, , 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:infamously failed and shut down. Many saw t🍎his as EA learning its lesson. It seems it hasn’🐬t.

There are theories that The Veilguard originating as a live service game was part of the problem. The game was built on the “underlying ওfoundations” of ﷽the scrapped live service, which might be why world states weren’t incorporated to any significant degree – it would be hard to🌸 make a mult🃏iplayer game work if everybody made different choices. It may also have compromised development because of the wasted resources.

It’s painfully clear that upper management at EA is completely out of touch with its players. I’ll be fair and say that it has managed to leverage its existing prope🐠rties to squeeze asꦛ much money out of its audience as it can. And I understand why Wilson might stand by this belief and continue to say it to shareholders, as this is basically EA’s business strategy. If live service isn’t the way the industry is going, EA is going to be hit hard.

I Wish I Cared More🐻 About MultiVersus Going Offline Again

MultiVersus was on𝔍ce my favourite live-service game, but its demise w🍨as simply inevitable.

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But it really is quite silly to say that players are still hankering for live service games when we’ve seen them fail time and time again. Existing games like and EA’s own might still be going strong against the odds, but with a few exceptions like and , new live service games are 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:fighting an uphill battle.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard did as well as it did because it had an enduring fan base and because it wasn’t mucking up the formula by being a live service game. After Anthem’s failure, absolutely nobody wanted to play another live service BioWare game, especially if it was the latest installment of a franchise that shaped conceptions of what a single-player RPG should look like. EA either doesn’t understand gamers or it’s willfully misrepresenting them to placate shareholders, an﷽d either way, it’s a bad look.