Despite a decade of anticipation from Dragon Age fans, EA confirmed that Dragon Age: The Veilguard failed to meet the company’s financial expectations during a recent earnings call. EA CEO Andrew Wilson said that The Veilguard’s underperformance is a reflection of the “evolving industry landscape.” EA’s CFO Stuart Canfield went one step further and seemed to suggest that The Veilguard would have performed better if it was a live-service game. Now, a former Dragon Age developer has shared his response to EA.
Ex-Dragon Age creative director Mike Laidlaw posted his thoughts on Bluesky, where he facetiously asked “Who’d be silly enough to demand something like that? …Twice.” At one point during its development, The Veilguard was going to be a live-service title before the decision was made to reverse course and go back to a single-player experience.
“Look, I’m not a fancy CEO guy,” wrote Laidlaw. “But if someone said to me ‘The key to this successful single-player IP’s success is to make it purely a multiplayer game. No, not a spin-off: fundamentally change the DNA of what people loved about the core game,’ to me, I’d probably, like, quit that job or something.”
Laidlaw actually did quit his job at BioWare, and he went on to found an indie studio called Yellow Brick Games, which recently released its first game, Eternal Strands.
If EA executives really believe that live-service would have made The Veilguard a success, it calls into question whether the company will make Mass Effect 5 into a live-service experience. BioWare was hit with a number of layoffs after The Veilguard’s poor performance, and now reportedly has less than 100 devs left to work on the next Mass Effect.