Over the past couple days, a new game hit the scene to some “sensational” reviews. And by sensational, I mean the complete divide between actual players, who put their own cash down, and the journalists and PR firms paid to hype this thing up.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard has been released, and it’s giving Dustborn a run for its money in shoving modern-day identity propaganda into what used to be a beloved fantasy series.
When I saw its second reveal, I pretty much scoffed. Long-time fans have waited almost a decade, and for what? A soulless corpse of the franchise, served up with hideously “progressive” companions.
Then we learned the game’s director, Corinne Busche, a male-to-female transgender individual, might just be using this beloved fantasy series as a platform for personal views.
And, sure enough, early-access reviewers got exclusive previews hyping up a character creation feature that lets players add “top surgery scars” to their character. Because apparently, in a world filled with dragons and magic, we’re in desperate need of self-mutilation “representation” to keep things “real.”
Now the game’s finally out, and if you thought the whole “transgender breast scars” option was bad, you haven’t seen anything yet. The writing is so cringeworthy it makes a Disney live-action drama look fantastic, Dragon Age is now perfectly safe for transgender people of all ages.
You want proof? Take a look at Taash, an incredibly ugly and androgynous Qunari, a race subverted from a fearsome, masculine design to looking like a horned, disfigured human with horns instead. And, believe it or not, Taash proudly identifies as non-binary in-game, despite being biologically female with a mans face.
In Dragon Age: The Veilguard, you’re forced to wade through your pansexual companions’ personal journeys with their sexualities and gender identities, whether you like it or not. Unlike classic RPGs where you could be a ruthless character who kills and or mock anyone or side with evil factions, here you’re stuck on a narrow path, toeing the line with your gender-fluid, gay companions.
Ironically, there’s one straight character, Lace Harding, whose supposed romantic kiss scene is so poorly directed and written it could almost be mistaken for satire.
The game is dripping with ideological pandering, from letting you identify as transgender in dialogue to scenes where characters are punished with pushups for a minor misgendering slip. All this despite the fact that earlier entries, made before transgenderism became a trend, would have laughed at these over-the-top scenes.
At one point, Taash even has an emotional coming-out scene as non-binary to her parents, ending in a shouting match, probably a projection from the game writer’s own family drama.
This game really does give Dustborn competition in the “social-ethics-as-fantasy” category, cramming modern-day ideals into video games, a world of dragons, magic, and wizardry and yet somehow, there’s no magic to actually transition between sexes, but instead, characters just announce they’re non-binary or transgender without question.
Upon release, the game was showered with praise from journalist PR firms clearly paid to promote this. Outlets like IGN, where Leana Hafer, a transgender woman, gave it a glowing 9/10, while other reviews echoed the same sentiment.
Some reviews, predictably, praised the game’s inclusivity options and blatant pandering. Because, of course, video games should apparently mirror real life delusions, where homosexual reviewers are all too ready to critique attractive women in gaming. It’s only “natural” for queer or non-binary reviewers to manipulate review scores based on how much a game panders to them, whether it aligns with their worldview or not.
Anyone paying attention quickly noticed some odd similarities in phrasing across multiple reviews of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, with each outlet calling it a “triumphant return to form” for BioWare and the Dragon Age series.
Of all possible descriptions, they just happened to pick that same line, almost as if it were scripted. EA’s reputation for bribing journalists makes it easy to believe that these outlets have a cozy, even incestuous relationship with game companies, using their influence not just to push identity politics but to cash in on ESG funding from places like BlackRock.
This sure seems like genuine, independent journalism, right? But while critics are busy singing the praises of this mess, players seem to have a different opinion, as Dragon Age: The Veilguard launched on Steam with a rather lackluster player count.
The game holds a 78% positive rating on Steam from a bit over 5,700 reviews, which is hardly impressive considering its blatant pandering to modern social propaganda. It seems most gamers are simply protesting by refusing to buy it and they’re making a point.
A quick look at SteamDB shows The Veilguard peaking at 77,465 players, which sounds big but isn’t exactly overwhelming. Meanwhile, journalists cling to any scrap to make this game look like a massive success, putting out articles that tout it as Steam’s top-selling title, if you ignore previously released games like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.
They’re also pushing the angle that it’s a “breakthrough” for EA on Steam, surpassing previous Dragon Age installments and marking BioWare’s biggest platform release to date.
Ironically, in pushing this narrative that The Veilguard has “surpassed previous installments” and is BioWare’s “best-performing title” on Steam, these outlets conveniently leave out a key detail: for years, EA has tried, and failed to make PC gamers adopt its Origin DRM platform.
It wasn’t until 2020 that EA finally started releasing their games on the PC’s most popular storefront, Steam. This includes Dragon Age: Origins and Inquisition.
It’s obvious that PC gamers wouldn’t be in a rush to buy decade-old titles like they’re fresh releases, but journalists just skip over this context. And without mentioning this, they make it seem like The Veilguard’s numbers are groundbreaking instead of just the first to actually launch on Steam right away.
But, when you look at the raw numbers and do some basic math, the cracks in The Veilguard’s success become clear. Sure, 77,000 concurrent players sounds big, but considering this game spent nearly nine years in development, EA and BioWare are staring down a massive hole when it comes to recouping those costs.
With a $60 price tag, even if 80,000 copies sold with no refunds, that only nets EA a measly $4.8 million. This is of course neglecting to mention the fact that Valve imposes a 20-30% sales fee upon games listed on its storefront so out of the $4.8 million in raw sales generated via Steam EA and BioWare actually walk away with only $3.36 million at worst or $3.84 million at best.
Console gaming might still be leading in revenue, holding about 57% of the market in 2023, but let’s be real, that lead is shrinking as console manufacturers struggle to pump out exclusives and are tossing their “only-on-console” titles to PC anyway.
Now, if we really wanted to stretch it and pretend that The Veilguard somehow doubled its PC numbers on console, bringing it to 240,000 copies, that would still only bring in $14.4 million, barely a dent in the costs piled up over nine years of development.
That’s not even in the same ballpark as being profitable.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard, once known as Dreadwolf, has been a complete disaster in terms of development. EA first announced the game back in 2018 with a cinematic trailer, branding it as Dragon Age 4 in 2020, then renaming it Dreadwolf in December 2022, and finally settling on The Veilguard in June this year.
That’s more than six years since the announcement, and it’s likely this mess started even earlier, with preplanning stages stretching back to before the 2018 trailer. Given that it’s been ten years since Dragon Age: Inquisition, a game that was poorly received by fans it’s fair to say The Veilguard has been in development anywhere from seven to nine years.
Industry insider Jason Schreier, who was notoriously silent on the ongoing sexual harassment issues at Activision Blizzard for years to benefit from industry perks recently reported that The Veilguard’s development has been full of turmoil.
By 2019, BioWare’s employee count had dropped to around 380, in 2010 they had around 800, half of which were supposedly Canadian, reflecting the studio’s rapid decline since Inquisition, as waves of employees abandoned ship after the disasters that were Mass Effect: Andromeda and ANTHEM.
I’ll stick to the 380 figure as a rough baseline.
Electronic Arts has been actively restructuring BioWare, aiming to reduce higher-cost tenured positions in favor of junior developers with significantly lower salaries.
Experienced senior staff typically earn much more than entry-level team members, making cost-saving through such measures logical for EA. For junior developers in the U.S., annual salaries can be as low as $44,000.
To illustrate the costs associated with Dragon Age: The Veilguard, let’s estimate BioWare’s employee wages on a conservative scale, assuming all 380 employees earn a flat $3,000 per month, $36,000 annually, well below the average for junior developers.
This brings the monthly wage expenditure to roughly $1.14 million, with annual wages totaling about $13.68 million. If Dragon Age: The Veilguard (previously Dreadwolf) has been in development for seven years, wages alone would have cost $95.76 million; for nine years, the wage cost reaches around $123.12 million.
These calculations exclude other significant expenses, such as office utilities, server upkeep, software licensing, and marketing, which could add $10 million to over $50 million in additional costs easily.
Given EA’s aim to streamline operations, these figures illustrate how maintaining even a reduced workforce still represents a substantial ongoing expense.
For instance, the 2009 release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 had a substantial development budget of $50 million, complemented by a near $200 million marketing budget from Activision.
As gaming has become increasingly mainstream, with platforms like Twitch, YouTube, and TikTok supplementing traditional advertising methods, the costs associated with marketing today are on par with or exceed those of the past.
For example, Ubisoft, which employs over 19,000 people globally, poured the most amount of resources they ever have into marketing Star Wars Outlaws, a title that ultimately flopped, selling only around a million copies in its first month and pushing the company closer to collapse.
Considering Dragon Age: The Veilguard, its estimated development budget ranges from $95 million to $123 million, not including the hefty marketing expenses and the operational costs of maintaining a studio. With a conservative estimate of 240,000 copies sold across console and PC platforms, BioWare has only recouped approximately $14.4 million from its investment.
This starkly indicates a considerable financial failure, potentially leading Electronic Arts to consider shutting down BioWare altogether in the coming months.
For Dragon Age: The Veilguard to break even at these figures, it would need to sell well over three million copies. While a peak concurrent player count of nearly 80,000 on Steam may appear impressive, the reality is that successful titles like Baldur’s Gate 3 have managed to achieve over 800,000 concurrent players and sell more than ten million copies, emphasizing that 80,000 is far from sufficient to ensure profitability.
For Dragon Age: The Veilguard to be considered a commercial success, it would have needed to achieve at least three times its current player count, reaching over 200,000 concurrent players to signify possible millions of sales.
This figure would suggest that the game had recouped its costs and could potentially turn a profit over time. Unfortunately, this hasn’t happened; many gamers continue to prefer titles like Baldur’s Gate 3, which remains popular
In fact, on the same day Veilguard launched, Capcom’s beta for Monster Hunter Wilds peaked at an impressive 463,798 players, highlighting just how much Veilguard is struggling and the inevitable fortune Capcom has on their hands.
The reality is that the game has underperformed both critically and commercially. Despite the efforts of gaming grifters and journalists to revive its reputation and promote misleading narratives about its success, claims that a title in development for seven to nine years could somehow be a triumph even with one million copies sold is retarded.
The financial consequences are glaring. Even if the game generates $60 million, it won’t come close to covering the massive investments EA has poured in, particularly when you factor in the hefty salaries of employees involved in its development. In every sense, EA and BioWare have only managed to deliver a flop with this title, one helmed by a transgender individual and comically inundated with modern identity politics that are shoved down the consumer’s throat.
