Dragon Age: The Veilguard
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a hit. After largely positive reviews, that appears to have translated into sales and a playercount that has broken records on PC.
The game has now beaten on 2023’s Star Wars: Jedi Survivor, which peaked at 67,855 players a year and a half ago. Dragon Age: The Veilguard hit 70,414 players and is currently the best-selling game on Steam, surpassing even Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. I’ve seen the game being compared unfavorablely to Baldur’s Gate 3 which put up an all-time peak of 875,343 players, but that was a largely PC-focused release, and few dispute it’s one of the best RPGs of all time. Even if it’s well-liked, few would claim that about Veilguard.
Console numbers are of course less trackable, but it was the #1 pre-ordered game on PS5 ahead of launch, and currently it sits at #5 on the most-played chart, the only single player game on the list. Xbox charts lag behind enough where we don’t have any meaningful data from that platform yet.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is also now racking up Steam user reviews which sit at a mostly positive 79% score among those who have purchased the game. General sentiment on social media also seems positive, with negativity almost entirely centered on one particular plotline involving a non-binary character, now being used as a culture war cudgel. But among most fans and new players, the vibes are good.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a hugely important title for BioWare, not just a return to the series after a decade on ice, but also an attempt to get past the negativity surrounding its last two major releases, Mass Effect Andromeda and the cautionary tale Anthem. No, Dragon Age: The Veilguard has not rocketed BioWare fully back to its glory days, but it does feel like it will be considered a win heading into BioWare’s next big test, a return to the Mass Effect universe.
Of course we don’t know what EA’s “expectations” were for the game, nor do we have official sales numbers from the company yet. After years and years of development, several apparent reworks and no doubt a huge budget, it must get past the AAA problem of big sales sometimes leading to slim profits depending on its ultimate cost. Still, this does feel like something EA will probably want to brag about in some form or another, reinforcing that BioWare is still a solid producer for the company after a decade of pretty fraught times. We’ll see how things progress from here.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.