In a plot twist that surprised exactly zero people who’ve been paying attention, EA has finally admitted what players have been calling out all along: Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a massive flop.
The public acknowledgment of the game’s abysmal performance has sent Electronic Arts’ stock crashing nearly 20%, adding yet another disappointing entry to their ever-growing catalog of failures.
On January 22nd, EA dropped a ‘pre-announcement’ about its upcoming Q3 FY25 financial results, and it’s not looking pretty. Instead of the expected modest growth in live services net bookings, they’re now predicting a mid-single-digit decline. What’s to blame? A disappointing launch for The Veilguard and a far weaker-than-anticipated performance from EA Sports FC 25, which is honestly the real shocker.
As EA puts it, Dragon Age barely managed to engage 1.5 million players, which is nearly 50% less than their original projections.
Naturally, EA being EA, they conveniently sidestepped revealing any actual sales figures. Instead, they trotted out the usual corporate jargon about how many players “engaged” with the game, which is just code for “we’re counting anyone who even glanced at the free trial.”
This pretty much screams that actual purchases are likely even lower than their already grim projections, especially considering Dragon Age: The Veilguard was available to EA Play subscribers with a 5-hour free trial through the cheapest package, and the full game required the EA Play Pro subscription.
EA CEO Andrew Wilson didn’t sugarcoat things in his investor update, bluntly stating, “Dragon Age and EA SPORTS FC 25 underperformed our net bookings expectations.” While he tried to spin some optimism for FC 25’s future, he had absolutely nothing positive to say about The Veilguard, effectively confirming what we all suspected: BioWare’s latest RPG, intended as a major studio comeback, has instead turned into a catastrophic failure.
This comes as no surprise, though. From the moment The Veilguard was announced, long-time Dragon Age fans were immediately disgusted. The franchise had been on a steady decline since Inquisition, and the marketing for this entry only reinforced the suspicion that it would be yet another agenda-driven disaster rather than a true fantasy RPG.
The red flags were obvious from the start, ugly, generic companions, including pansexual romances with dialogue straight out of a Disney live-action show, and a transgender game director, Corinne Busche, who seemed far more focused on pushing personal identity politics than crafting a compelling story.
The writing was on the wall when EA started shoving its “inclusive” character creator into the spotlight, bragging about “top surgery scars” as if that was somehow the key feature of a high fantasy game.
But the forced social messaging didn’t stop there, The Veilguard is absolutely loaded with cringe-worthy moments, from the ability to assert a transgender identity for your player character to scenes of your non-binary companion coming-out to their parents of which other characters are made to do push-ups for misgendering someone.
Rather than letting players carve their own paths, the game forces them into a narrow, sanitized experience, packed with pansexual companions who spend more time discussing their identities than actually driving the plot forward.
As expected, gaming journalists tripped over each other to praise The Veilguard, with sites like IGN throwing out glowing reviews, all proudly declaring that despite the overwhelming consumer backlash, this game was a “return to form” for BioWare.
These same outlets also pushed the narrative that the game was a “record-breaking” success on Steam, conveniently glossing over the fact that previous Dragon Age titles didn’t even land on the platform until 2020.
And then there’s the infamous Jason Schreier, formerly of Kotaku and now making his mark at Bloomberg, who used the typical journalist sleaze to spin the narrative of a large-scale EA title from a popular franchise like Dragon Age launching on Steam as EA’s “best” release on the platform.
He used that to discredit and deride the consumer boycott against the game, which was rooted in frustration over its obsessive focus on diversity and inclusivity. He highlighted how The Veilguard topped Steam’s sales charts at launch before smugly proclaiming that, while he didn’t actually like the game, he was more than happy to relish in the belief that hateful, bigoted consumers had “lost” over the game’s supposed success.
In reality, The Veilguard peaked at just 89,418 concurrent players on Steam, not exactly a number that screams blockbuster hit, especially for a game that spent upwards of nine years in development.
And speaking of that development cycle… what a disaster. The Veilguard began life as Dragon Age 4, was later rebranded as Dreadwolf, and then finally landed on its latest identity crisis of a name. Years of mismanagement, shifting creative visions, and corporate meddling left BioWare with a bloated budget and a game that ultimately satisfied no one.
Industry insiders had long reported that BioWare was hemorrhaging talent, with veteran developers fleeing in droves while EA cut costs by swapping them out for junior staff. The end result? A soulless, half-baked product that somehow still took nearly a decade to make.
With an estimated six to ten years in development and a team of over 380 employees, EA likely burned well over $80 million just on wages for The Veilguard, not even factoring in upkeep, system upgrades, or marketing.
And yet, somehow, they deluded themselves into thinking that three million paying customers would eagerly throw down $60 for a geriatric RPG soap opera stuffed with identity politics and trans surgery scars in a medieval fantasy setting, a world supposedly defined by magic and dragons apparently needs to leverage real world identity terminologies and yet somehow features the construct of non-confirmative non-binary characters.
EA’s goal? To rake in at least $90 million from 3 million sales, further highlighting the bloated budgets, absurd expectations, and ideological fixation that continue to plague modern game development.
The reality is simple: Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a massive financial failure, and EA knows it. No amount of media spin, glowing reviews, diversity checkboxes, or pre-scripted “triumphant return to form” reviews can change that.
The stock market isn’t buying the hype either, EA’s shares nosedived 20% following the announcement, a clear indication that investors see this game for what it truly is: an unmitigated disaster.
Meanwhile, its transgender director, Corinne Busche, dodged every sales question in post-release interviews, instead focusing on how “proud” he was of the game’s glowing praise from journalists. But critic approval means nothing when players aren’t buying the damn thing. Busche even had the nerve to compare The Veilguard’s sales trajectory to Dragon Age: Inquisition’s so-called “long burn,” as if this latest catastrophe has any shot at redeeming itself over time.
In reality, Corinne Busche has almost certainly been sacked following this trainwreck, and Dragon Age itself is all but guaranteed to be put into another decade-long coma, if not outright killed off for good. And honestly? That might be for the best.
Gamers have made their voices heard in the only way that matters: by keeping their wallets closed. BioWare’s so-called return to form is nothing more than another soulless corporate cash grab wrapped in identity politics, and the market has responded accordingly.
