It’s been nearly a week since the release of EA and BioWare’s Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and despite the game’s heavy focus on identity politics, featuring non-binary companions and storylines touching on themes like coming out, there’s been no official word from EA or BioWare on its sales figures.
Unlike typical game releases, there’s been a noticeable silence around milestone announcements, even for a modest milestone like a million copies sold while journalists push disingenuous narratives about the games success for EA on Steam, despite the fact that Electronic Arts only ever decided to put their games on Valve’s storefront since 2020.
Journalists have been pushing the misguided belief that Dragon Age: The Veilguard has been somewhat successful as the biggest single-player launch for EA on Steam, despite it being one of the only EA titles to release on the platform that generally had an established fanbase.
We’ve followed The Veilguard closely, from its reannouncement to the inclusion of transgender surgery scars as nods to real-world representation. Despite receiving enthusiastic praise from journalists, who lauded its progressive themes, the game’s peak player counts on PC have been relatively low.
With development spanning around seven years and a rumored budget possibly exceeding $150 million, BioWare’s latest venture doesn’t seem to capture the widespread appeal it aimed for.
While journalists rally to praise and defend the latest entry of Dragon Age, repackaged with modern identity politics and agendas, BioWare has now shared its bleak outlook on the future of Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
Historically, every Dragon Age game has received extensive post-launch content. Dragon Age: Origins had the Awakening expansion, which introduced a new area, five additional party members, and nine smaller DLCs that expanded the lore, quests, and equipment options.
Dragon Age II followed with six DLC packs, including new quests, items, and the companion Sebastian Vael. Dragon Age: Inquisition, though divisive among fans, marked BioWare’s most successful launch, reaching 1.14 million sales in its first week, and later released six substantial DLC packs.
Expansions like Jaws of Hakkon and The Descent introduced new exploration areas, while Trespasser served as a story finale that set the stage for the series’ next chapter.
For The Veilguard, however, BioWare remains silent on sales figures, even as the gaming industry is more popular than ever. The absence of milestone announcements or DLC plans has cast doubt on whether the title will see the same level of post-launch support that past Dragon Age titles enjoyed.
Oh, but of course, the sequel is a beacon of virtue, overflowing with political correctness.
You’re gently shepherded along as a do-gooder, with no room to deviate from praising and adoring your pansexual companions. The game goes out of its way to let you declare your character’s trans identity during in-game dialogues and features journal entries with modern gender declarations, like “trans women are women.”
Naturally, this has nothing to do with the fact that Corinne Busche, the director for Dragon Age: The Veilguard, just so happens to be a “male-to-female transgender.”
The Dragon Age series used to be known for meaningful DLC and expansion passes, but it’s clear The Veilguard isn’t getting the same treatment. With a pitiful peak of around 80,000 players on Steam, despite spending seven years in development hell, it’s pretty much a commercial flop.
By our estimates, this game would need to sell over three million units just to break even. Even the creative director, Jon Epler, admitted in an interview with Rolling Stone that BioWare has no plans for post-launch content for The Veilguard. The studio is pivoting entirely to Mass Effect, likely because any additional development would just continue to bleed capital with no chance of profit given how poorly this game expectedly performed.
BioWare’s last RPG, Mass Effect: Andromeda, didn’t get DLC either. Sure, Andromeda was a flop with fans, but it still sold enough for EA to call it a “success.” ANTHEM, however, crashed and burned, thanks to BioWare’s inability to deliver meaningful post-launch content, eventually leading EA to kill off BioWare’s plans to “remake” it with a large-scale update.
In the interview, Epler says that The Veilguard’s design was definitely influenced by the poor reception received by BioWare’s two prior games, Anthem and Andromeda. “I do think Andromeda was a better game than its reception suggested,” he said, “but on the flip side, I don’t think the reception was unfair. At the time of launch, there were technical issues and things that didn’t work.”
If you’re willing to take a modern Western game developer at their word, you might buy into the idea that BioWare, a team overrun by radical feminists with their latest project being headed by Corinne Bursche, someone who thinks biology is optional and we can simply declare ourselves women on a whim, “responded” to Andromeda’s criticism by making characters even uglier in The Veilguard.
Because really, what other explanation is there?
As for Mass Effect, it’s clear the series is also fucked. BioWare censored the original games in the Legendary Edition and loaded their recent tabletop board game with pronoun propaganda.
Thankfully, they haven’t revealed anything concrete about the next Mass Effect since they announced it in 2020. With The Veilguard disrupting the Dragon Age lore and fantasy setting just to hammer in modern gender politics, bland writing, and scolding characters over “misgendering,” it’s safe to assume the next Mass Effect, built on Unreal Engine 5, will be littered with the same agenda-driven nonsense and will likely flop too.
By our estimates, EA and BioWare probably lost over a hundred million dollars on The Veilguard, and they’ll likely bleed another hundred million with Mass Effect 5. Which will almost certainly act as the last straw before EA finally shuts BioWare down as no new projects are in their pipeline.
