Grummz on X - "The WORST SCENE in DRAGON AGE VEILGUARD just dropped. You can never apologize enough, and you have to do it in JUST the right way, Dragon Age lectures. Dragon Age Veilguard lectures you on the right way to apologize for misgendering someone, and it is as cringe, long and painfully drawn as you would imagine. No wait, it's worse."
Former 'Dragon Age' Lead Writer Warns Of "Anti-Fans" Wanting Games To Fail To Send Developers Lessons : r/KotakuInAction - "All of this " people wanted Bioware to fail, that's why Veilguard failed" is getting old. The game was eventually given for free and nobody wanted it. When people don't want your crap for free even, maybe it's time to stop blaming others, own up to the turd you produced and do better. But that would require devs who are actually real devs instead of morons living in a bubble that will lash out at anyone who criticize them. Maybe you guys shouldn't work on video games if the only thing you can do is deflect blame."
"The people in charge need to find somebody else to blame, otherwise that would mean they have to change their plans or face some kind of repercussions. We all know that if they leave the company they will just infect some other place though."
Amazon Is Literally Giving Away Dragon Age: The Veilguard for Free — And Still Nobody’s Playing - "Between August 20 and September 2, 2025, Amazon Australia launched a promotion where anyone buying qualifying items — everything from routers to controllers — would receive a free copy of Dragon Age: The Veilguard. According to reports, more than 1,000 separate items triggered the freebie. Imagine buying a printer or a kitchen appliance and finding this “bonus” video game tossed into your order. Far from being a celebration, it comes across as a digital clearance bin. That’s not an exaggeration. Amazon’s own fine print described the promotion as an effort to unload inventory, a sign the warehouses are overflowing with unsold stock. For a Dragon Age title — once considered a guaranteed hit — that alone is humiliating... Veilguard didn’t even last a single fiscal year before being shoveled out for free. Maybe the defenders will say, “But free exposure boosts player counts!” Except… it hasn’t. According to SteamDB, Dragon Age: The Veilguard peaked at 89,418 concurrent players in November 2024. That number is respectable — until you consider it’s a flagship BioWare RPG with 10 years of hype. Today, the 24-hour peak barely scrapes 1,000 players, and live counts hover around 700-800 at any given time. In other words: even when Dragon Age: The Veilguard is free, almost nobody wants to play it. The audience evaporated in less than a year, and no amount of bundling has revived interest... What makes this especially damning is the franchise legacy. Dragon Age wasn’t just any RPG. For years, it stood shoulder-to-shoulder with The Witcher and Elder Scrolls as a benchmark for immersive dark fantasy storytelling. BioWare had the goodwill, the talent, and the fanbase."
Dragon Age maestro says EA always spoke about a hypothetical 'nerd cave' full of diehard RPG fans who would "always show up," so you "didn't have to try and appeal to them" - "BioWare veteran David Gaider explained that before he left BioWare, his tastes had become somewhat "old-fashioned" in EA's eyes. "I was very vocal on the Dragon Age team," he says. "I was always trying to push it to our traditional mechanics. And that wasn't very welcome in the EA sphere." He says that EA considered those mechanics - the kind that shaped games like Dragon Age: Origins - to be "slow and cumbersome," rather than the "action-y and slick" presentation that the studio was being pushed toward. That meant that Gaider's views "were often not very welcome" despite his long tenure at the studio and work on many of its most famous RPGs."
Ditto for all the other IPs ruined by the left
Meme - *Unknown 9: Awakening, Skull and Bones, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Concord, Star Wars: Outlaws*
"All these games flopped! 2024 was a horrible year for gaming."
"All these games flopped! 2024 was a great year for gaming!"
Meme - "This is so toxic and sad (from the director of Kingdom Come Deliverance dev)"
"Kingdom Come Deliverance released on 13 February 2018. 7,615 players right now. 10,926 24-hour peak. 96,069 all-time peak 6.8 years ago
"Dragon The Veilguard released on 31 October 2024. 4,635 players right now. 10,727 24-hour peak. 89,418 all-time peak last month"
Looks like the Dragon age: Veilguard sub is not taking Daniel Vávra's tweet well. : r/Asmongold - "Weird that he doesn't like the people who tried to boycott his game and called him a racist because he made an accurate depiction of his own countrys history"
Meme - "Game writers then: Hope is what makes us strong. It is why we are here. It is what we fight with when all else is lost.
Game writers now: Rook: But once I was able to be honest with myself, it was a relief to figure out I was trans"
Meme - *Unfinished Horse Drawing / Flaming Horse Rating*
Descending order of quality: *Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: The Veilguard*
Meme - "NON-BINARY FOR NON-BINARY BY NON-BINARY"
"90. IGN. Dragon Age: The Veilguard refreshes and reinvigorates this storied series with enjoyable action combat, a fantastic cast of companions, and moving character writing."
"Len @TilFolkvang she/they"
"And while we've been asked by the devs not to spoil specifically who I'm talking about here, as a non-binary person myself, Veilguard includes some of the most authentic representation of coming to terms with gender stuff and having to navigate your family's reaction to it I've seen yet in a game. It doesn't feel like an after school special or like I'm being pandered to. It's quite well-handled, and finding out that the writer for this character is non-binary themselves did not surprise me at all."
"HE SAYS, "IT DOESN'T FEEL LIKE I'M BEING PANDERED TO" BUT GETS HAPPY AND GIVES THE GAME A 9/10 KNOWING THAT ITS A NON-BINARY WHO WROTE THE CHARACTERS. THIS IS PANDERING 101"
Meme - "DRAGON AGE: VEILGUARD TELL YOU TO PRETEND TO CARE
"100 CGMagazine. BioWare took the time they needed to bring Dragon Age fans the perfect RPG experience. From style to story and everything in between, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is everything I wanted from this entry in the Dragon Age universe"
"Dayna Eileen. She/Her"
"Each companion also has their own story arc. BioWare has made a conscious effort to become more inclusive regarding race, gender and other social issues. A few of their stories this time around will have a great impact on specific audiences, and it is great to see a company jump into these issues head-on rather than just making pronouns or including skin colour. I am sure a wake of people will have nasty things to say, but seeing more people be able to see themselves in video games is only good in my books, even if I don't relate to the stories directly."
"THESE CHARACTERS AND STORIES WERE CLEARLY MADE TO PANDER TO A SPECIFIC AUDIENCE. YOU HAVE TO PRETEND AND VALIDATE THOSE WHO ARE PRETENDING TO BE ANOTHER GENDER."
Meme - "HE WANTS MORE PRONOUNS IN THE GAME"
"92. GamePro Germany. Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a fantastic action-rpg that, after a bumpy start, delivers the best story in the series."
"Otta makes Dice she/they *Pride flag* *watermelon*"
"Gendering in the German language edition. Gendered language is used in the German voice-over. We at GamePro generally see this as a positive decision, but the implementation is not always entirely successful. For non-binary people, the pronouns hen/hem (they) are used and an "-e" is added to the title, as in Stadthaltere. However, the game explains this procedure far too late, so it can be quite confusing at first when a character is addressed with pronouns that some may never have heard of. A quick note at the beginning about how the game implements gender-neutral pronouns would definitely have been helpful."
"SIMPLE SOLUTION TO THIS OVERWHEMLING DILEMMA IS TO SIMPLY ADD A MALE AND FEMALE ONLY OPTIONS"
Meme - "DRAGON AGE: VEILGUARD REINVENTS ROMANCE BECAUSE 'GeY'"
"100. Eurogamer. A fantasy role-playing game of astonishing spectacle. This is the best Dragon Age, and perhaps BioWare, has ever been."
"Bertie. Brighton, England (LGBT land)"
"In many ways it is a game about them, your companions. Through them The Veilguard speaks to our hearts, and it's how the game approaches complex topics from our own World - topics like gender identity, neurodiversity, personal trauma, and parenthood - and each is handled gently and unobtrusively, and with maturity and care. Romance is of course part of the game, but I'm pleased by how restrained it is here, and how it refocuses relationships on the emotional side committing to to Taash, butino one was giving anything away easily."
"HE IGNORES OTHER GAME'S ROMANCE OPTION AS SIMPLY ABOUT 'BANGING SOMEONE: GAMES LIKE MASS EFFECT, THE WITCHER 1-3 AND THE PERSONA SERIES FEATURED THE EMOTIONAL SIDE AS WELL. THERE ONLY SIN, IT WASN'T 'GeY ENOUGH."
Dragon Age: The Veilguard Director Corrine Busche Reportedly Leaves BioWare - "According to her LinkedIn page, Busche had been at EA since December 2006, working on a myriad of games, including the Tiger Woods Golf franchise, The Sims, and Dragon Age. After 18 years, her departure is likely to come as a major surprise. Dragon Age: The Veilguard proved, arguably, the most divisive in series history. Origins and Inquisition both scored in the mid-80s on Metacritic, while Veilguard struggled with an 82. It also only managed a 79 on Opencritic and a 4/5 from us here at TheGamer. Certain creative choices, an unpopular art style, and a shallow narrative were some of the more contentious issues. These all led to The Veilguard having a smaller launch in Europe than Dragon's Dogma 2... Busche's departure isn't the first high-profile one since the launch of Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Last month, it was confirmed that the writer for characters such as Josephine and Emmrich, Sylvia Feketekuty, had left the studio after 15 years."
Grummz on X - "We're winning. DAV has fallen. Dragon Age Veilguard has failed to recover it's costs. It has failed and no, holiday sales won't save it. Bioware is so angry that Dragon Age Veilguard sales numbers have leaked, that they are launching an internal investigation to find the leakers. Here's what we know from @EndymionYT , @SmashJT , @RealHypnotic1 and others:
- Concurrent players have dropped off the charts just 2 weeks in, sitting at a peak of 34,068 vs their launch weekend high of 89,418. A 62% drop before the month even closes.
- Returns are rumored to be 30,000 copies, and the game is being traded in at Gamestop so fast that used copies of the game are flooded and being discounted with a trade-in value of only $14 cash. By comparison, Stellar Blade, a much smaller IP and many months older than DAV is $16.10 cash, which shows you just how bad DAV's value has dropped. Fun fact: Star Wars Outlaws is even worse, at just $11.90 cash. Stellar Blade wins again.
- Total sales for DAV have only JUST crested 1 million copies in 2 weeks. Budget is rumored to be at 250-300M for the game, making it fall well short of breaking even. If you take most games sales profit at around 70-80% of list price (after store markups and digital platform fees), a 300M budget would need around 6-7 million copies sold. (this is where I differ from most other's estimates who say 4-5M).
Dragon Age Veilguard has failed. They will see a tiny surge in sales in Holidays but not much. Total copies will barely reach 2M by next year (unless they start just giving it away - expect heavy discounts and bundles to make this number seem bigger than it is). Gamers have rejected the heavy handed woke, preachy politics for one, and DA fans have rejected the new graphics and action oriented gameplay, which feel very alien to the franchise. You can do diversity right, without preachy HR lectures disguised as a story, and you can do it very very wrong, like DAV. We're winning. Everybody fights, everybody builds, nobody quits!
Sources: Gamestop website, Steam DB, insider leak videos from Smash and Endymion and Hypnotic retail data and my own industry experience publishing, operating and developing AAA games."
Dragon Age: The Veilguard Bombs on PlayStation Plus, BioWare Can't Even Give This Game Away - "Four months after launch of Veilguard, Electronic Arts gave the game away for free on PlayStation Plus, hoping to reignite interest in a title that had already been rejected by most of the gaming community. The outcome? Absolute disaster. Despite being handed out at no cost to millions of subscribers, The Veilguard couldn’t even crack the top 10 most-played PlayStation games in March. According to True Trophies, which tracks over 3.4 million active PlayStation Network accounts, the game barely reached 15th place in player engagement. For context, it was outperformed by The Cowabunga Collection, a retro collection of decades-old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games—a humbling reality for what was supposed to be a major release from one of EA’s premier RPG studios. This isn’t just a poor showing. It’s complete rejection. If players aren’t even willing to download a game when it’s literally free, that speaks volumes about how much of the audience has turned its back on the franchise. From the very start, The Veilguard was on shaky ground. Hyped as a major return for the Dragon Age franchise, the game instead became one of the most disappointing releases of 2024. EA reportedly had expectations that it would sell 10 million copies over its lifetime, yet after two months, it had only “engaged” 1.5 million players—a vague and misleading metric that conveniently avoids saying how many people actually bought the game. In reality, The Veilguard was abandoned almost immediately after launch. The game’s price dropped to $24.99 within four months, GameStop slashed its trade-in value to a measly $22 shortly after release, and reports surfaced that tens of thousands of copies were returned—a rare fate for a major AAA release. Players weren’t just uninterested; they were actively rejecting the game. Rather than admitting that poor gameplay, weak storytelling, and a forced ideological shift turned longtime fans away, EA tried to spin the failure by suggesting that The Veilguard flopped because it wasn’t a live service game... Baldur’s Gate 3, a purely narrative-driven RPG, dominated the industry and won Game of the Year. Elden Ring, another game with no live service elements, became a massive commercial success. Gamers are still hungry for deep, well-crafted single-player experiences—they just don’t want rushed, soulless cash grabs loaded with modern ideological messaging. EA’s claim that The Veilguard would have performed better if it had live-service mechanics is laughable. If anything, trying to force microtransactions or a multiplayer element would have made things even worse—just ask anyone who played Anthem."