Dragon Age: The Veilguard might have sold more copies and made more money for EA if it had been a live-service game, the publisher’s top brass appear to have suggested.
Speaking to investors last night following the release of EA’s latest quarterly results, both EA boss Andrew Wilson and the company’s chief financial officer suggested the game’s offline, one-and-done nature was to blame for it not meeting the publisher’s sales expectations.
“In order to break out beyond the core audience, games need to directly connect to the evolving demand of players who increasingly seek shared world features and deeper engagement alongside high-quality narratives in this beloved category,” Wilson said.
“Dragon Age had a high-quality launch and was well reviewed by critics and those who played. However, it did not resonate with a broad enough audience in this highly competitive market.”
After a long and bumpy development, Dragon Age: The Veilguard finally emerged last year as a single-player game. But, of course, an earlier iteration of the project had been intended to include online play and live-service features.
The length of the project’s development is in large part due to the fact that EA flip-flopped on the game initially being single-player, then live-service, then single-player again - a decision taken after the high-profile flop of BioWare’s actual live-service effort Anthem.
Now, EA appears to be suggesting the game should have stayed as a live-service after all.
“Dragon Age: The Veilguard underperformed icing the competitive dynamics of the single-player RPG market,” EA’s chief financial officer Stuart Canfield said - leaving little wiggle room for how EA sees the genre’s future.
“Historically, blockbuster storytelling has been the primary way our industry bought beloved IP to the players,” Canfield continued. “The game’s financial performance highlights [the] evolving industry landscape and reinforces the importance of our actions to reallocate resources towards our most significant and highest potential opportunities.”
The big, unspoken question here now, of course, is what this means for Mass Effect 5. Currently, BioWare has given no indication that the game will be a live-service. But these fresh comments by EA execs certainly raise the question of whether it is going to bankroll another single-player BioWare game once more.
Alternatively, perhaps we’ve seen the evidence that EA will support a single-player Mass Effect - albeit via the newly slimmed-down BioWare that has emerged this month after many staff were moved elsewhere, and some sadly lost their jobs.
Mass Effect 5 lacks a release date, of course, and appears to still be several years away.
I swear to the holy RNG Gods if they fuck with my Mass Effect I’ll nut punch them!
Publishers and developers really be out here looking at literally everything except the problem, lol.
Admitting you have a problem is the hardest part. Aha
I mean Mass Effect 3 had the amazing “live service” of online multiplayer that was an absolute blast.
So it’s nothing new.
I believe DA:I had something similar but it wasn’t something I ever did.
Andromeda has multiplayer too, and it was also really fun but different.
Live service and online multiplayer aren’t one in the same. I’m all for multiplayer like ME3. It was fantastic and I hope they add something like it to the new one.
Also known as “living” games or “Games as a Service,” there are a few ways to define a live service game. These games are typically based upon some form of online multiplayer, built around the idea of constant evolution over time through the release of additional content and updates. Titles are often (but not always) free-to-play.
Not all games that receive post-launch content are live service games. Cyberpunk 2077 and Elden Ring both have significant expansions but they’re not live service games. The number of changes and frequency of updates are generally much higher in a live service game.
For live service titles, the base game is often seen as the starting point, with the “end-game” being a jumping-off point for future expansions. Many of these games lay down multi-stage roadmaps for years of content, ahead of time. These games often see major shakeups to core assets like maps, classes, and game modes.
At its core, a live service game is a title that is designed to be continuously updated with new content and features after its initial release.
So having a multiplayer where you add a few new maps and characters over the games lifetime isn’t really live service in my opinion. It’s just DLC. There are no shakeups or major rebalancing or game changes made. Just some extras if you like.
Fair enough. I seem to recall ME3 multiplayer seeing a fair amount of patches specifically to multiplayer to nerf and buff skills and classes.
I thought that would qualify it with the DLC and time limited events like double XP and such that happened regularly.
Compared to games like Marvel Rivals, Overwatch, or literally any random gacha game you can find that would make it seem significantly less like a live service game.
But I do remember new maps, characters, and modes getting released for ME3 multiplayer at least haha. Support was not as long lasting or as frequent as you might expect for the aforementioned games.
I’m a BioWare fan from way back. I’ve played nearly every BioWare game they’ve ever released, as they were released, including that Sonic Chronicles RPG that I had zero interest in. In most cases I finished them with 100%, even with The Veilguard, which was bland and forgettable in nearly every way. The Mass Effect trilogy is one of my favorite game series of all time.
But. If they make Mass Effect 5 some shitty live service game, I’m not going near it and they might as well just close BioWare and absorb the few employees still around into the EA mothership. It hasn’t been “classic BioWare” for over a decade.
EA: where great studios go to die
