Dragon Age: The Veilguard was not the hit sequel EA wanted. From its very first CGI trailer, the writing was on the walls. Ten years of waiting was about to be met with a resounding 'eh' as it fell 50 percent below expectations, reaching just 1.5 million players.
A lot went wrong, as the crowd-pleaser aimed at everyone struggled to satisfy anyone. Yet EA CEO Andrew Wilson believes the problem was the lack of live-service elements, not the studio interference or everything else that people have endlessly complained about since launch. Former writer David Gaider, who is credited with creating much of the series' lore, and some of its most iconic characters, is one of many onlookers poking holes in Wilson's comments.
"There are certainly all sorts of lessons a company could learn from a game like Veilguard (I still haven't played it, so I'm going off what other people have said), but 'maybe it should have been live service' being the takeaway seems a bit short-sighted and self-serving," Gaider posted on Bluesky. "Not that there's any shortage of that, when it comes to deciding why a game doesn't do well."
Gaider has some advice for...
