Latest news with #DragonAge
Business Wire
10-07-2025
- Business
- Business Wire
EA to Release First Quarter Fiscal Year 2026 Results on July 29, 2025
REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: EA) will release its financial results for the fiscal quarter ended June 30, 2025 after the close of market on Tuesday, July 29, 2025. In conjunction with this release, EA will host a conference call to review its financial results for the fiscal quarter, discuss its outlook for the future and may disclose other material developments affecting its business and/or financial performance. Listeners may access the conference call live via a dial-in number or audio webcast. Tuesday, July 29, 2025 2:00 pm Pacific Time (5:00 pm Eastern Time) Dial-in numbers: Domestic:(855) 761-5600; International:(646) 307-1097 Conference ID: 5939891 Webcast: EA's financial results release will be available after the close of market on July 29, 2025 on EA's website at A dial-in replay of the conference call will be available until August 5, 2025 at (800) 770-2030 (domestic) or (609) 800-9909 (international) using pin code 5939891. An audio webcast replay of the conference call will be available for one year at Updates regarding EA's business are available on EA's blog at About Electronic Arts Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: EA) is a global leader in digital interactive entertainment. The Company develops and delivers games, content and online services for Internet-connected consoles, mobile devices and personal computers. In fiscal year 2025, EA posted GAAP net revenue of approximately $7.5 billion. Headquartered in Redwood City, California, EA is recognized for a portfolio of critically acclaimed, high-quality brands such as EA SPORTS FC™, Battlefield™, Apex Legends™, The Sims™, EA SPORTS™ Madden NFL, EA SPORTS™ College Football, Need for Speed™, Dragon Age™, Titanfall™, Plants vs. Zombies™ and EA SPORTS F1 ®. More information about EA is available at EA, EA SPORTS, EA SPORTS FC, Battlefield, Need for Speed, Apex Legends, The Sims, Dragon Age, Titanfall, and Plants vs. Zombies are trademarks of Electronic Arts Inc. John Madden, NFL, FIFA and F1 are the property of their respective owners and used with permission. Safe Harbor for Forward-Looking Statements During the course of the presentation, Electronic Arts may make forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future financial performance of the company that are subject to change. Statements including words such as 'anticipate,' 'believe,' 'expect,' 'intend,' 'estimate,' 'plan,' 'predict,' 'seek,' 'goal,' 'will,' 'may,' 'likely,' 'should,' 'could' (and the negative of any of these terms), 'future' and similar expressions also identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and reflect management's current expectations. Our actual results could differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements. Factors that might cause or contribute to such differences include those discussed in Part II, Item 1A of Electronic Arts' latest Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q under the heading 'Risk Factors', as well as in other documents we have filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2025. We assume no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statement for any reason, except as required by law.
Forbes
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
EA Is Completely Shutting Down ‘Anthem' And No, You Can't Get A Refund
Anthem One of the biggest misfires of the looter-shooter Destiny-copycat era was BioWare's Anthem, a game that sapped loads of time and resources away from the likes of Dragon Age and Mass Effect to produce a half-baked release. I kind of loved it. Anthem had so, so many problems, of course, and it was not shocking that eventually, EA killed it instead of tripling down with more major updates. But now, EA has ended things for a second time. For good, It has just been announced that Anthem servers will be shut down entirely on January 12, 2026, six months from now. The game has still been able to be played all this time, even since its 'death' in February 2021, but now? Nothing. You won't be able to play at all. This is sad because Anthem will always be a 'what could have been' for me with genuinely fun combat and moves toward fixing itself near the end. But this raises another modern-era games question about a title that people paid for but now will not be able to play at all. Despite single-player elements including an entire campaign you'd play solo, because the game needs a server connection, with those servers offline, you cannot play it. And no, no refunds will be issued for the game. The FAQ doesn't address this, but it's true, though it does have a section about how you can still spend your premium in-game currency until it's shut down! Hooray! Anthem FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder The timing of this comes alongside a big movement called Stop Killing Games, a petition that has racked up 1.1 million supporters and is about exactly this: games that players paid for being summarily deleted from existence. Here's the description: Right now this is largely based in Europe, and in some countries, progress has been made regarding the process in some places. This current movement is UK-focused, as a petition like this will be considered to be brought before Parliament if it gets 100,000 signatures. It has certainly gotten that. A separate movement to register complaints in France about The Crew being shut down is also part of this. This is not some moneymaking scheme; Stop Killing Games does not want funding, but a genuine consumer movement, and now we can add Anthem to a long list of games that are unplayable because they were designed as online-only, even with single-player elements, and have shut those servers down so they are inaccessible. And no, no refunds. That seems very wrong. Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Bluesky and Instagram. Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
Los Angeles Times
21-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Inside the ‘Dragon Age' debacle that gutted EA's BioWare Studio
In early November, on the eve of the holiday shopping season, staffers at the video game studio BioWare were feeling optimistic. After an excruciating development cycle, they had finally released their latest game, 'Dragon Age: The Veilguard,' and the early reception was largely positive. The role-playing game was topping sales charts on Steam, and solid, if not spectacular, reviews were rolling in. But in the weeks that followed, the early buzz cooled as players delved deeper into the fantasy world, and some BioWare employees grew anxious. For months, everyone at the subsidiary of the video game publisher Electronic Arts had been under intense pressure. The studio's previous two games, 'Mass Effect: Andromeda' and 'Anthem,' had flopped, and there were rumors that if 'Dragon Age' underperformed, BioWare might become another of EA's many casualties. Not long after Christmas, the bad news surfaced. EA announced in January that the new 'Dragon Age' had reached only 1.5 million players, missing the company's expectations by 50%. The holiday performance of another recently released title, 'EA Sports FC 25,' was also subpar, compounding the problem. As a result of the struggling titles, EA Chief Executive Officer Andrew Wilson said, the company would be significantly lowering its sales forecast for the fiscal year ahead. EA's share price promptly plunged 18%. ''Dragon Age' had a high-quality launch and was well-reviewed by critics and those who played,' Wilson said on an earnings call. 'However, it did not resonate with a broad enough audience in this highly competitive market.' Days after the sales revision, EA laid off a chunk of BioWare's staff at the studio's headquarters in Edmonton, Canada, and permanently transferred many of the remaining workers to other divisions. For the storied, 30-year-old game maker, it was a stunning fall that left many fans wondering how things had gone so haywire — and what might come next for the stricken studio. According to interviews with nearly two dozen people who worked on 'Dragon Age: The Veilguard,' there were several reasons behind its failure, including marketing misfires, poor word of mouth and a 10-year gap since the previous title. Above all, sources point to the rebooting of the product from a single-player game to a multiplayer one — and then back again — a switch that muddled development and inflated the title's budget, they say, ultimately setting the stage for EA's potentially unrealistic sales expectations. A spokesperson for EA declined to comment. The union between BioWare and EA started off with lofty aspirations. In 2007, EA executives announced they were acquiring BioWare and another gaming studio in a deal worth $860 million. The goal was to diversify their slate of games, which was heavy in sports titles, such as 'Madden NFL,' and light in the kind of adventure and role-playing games that BioWare was known for. Initially, it looked like a smart move thanks to a string of big hits. In 2014, BioWare released 'Dragon Age: Inquisition,' the third installment in a popular action series dropping players in a semi-open world full of magic, elves and fire-spewing dragons. The fantasy title won the Game of the Year award and sold 12 million copies, according to its executive producer Mark Darrah — a major validation of EA's diversification strategy. Before long, Darrah and Mike Laidlaw, the creative director, began kicking around ideas for the next 'Dragon Age' installment, aiming for a game that would be smaller in scope. But before much could get done, BioWare shifted the studio's focus to more pressing titles coming down the pike. In 2017, BioWare released 'Mass Effect: Andromeda,' the fourth installment in a big-budget action series set in space. Unlike its critically successful predecessors, the game received mediocre reviews and was widely mocked by fans. A few months after the disappointing release, the head of BioWare stepped down and was soon replaced by Microsoft's Casey Hudson, an alumnus of BioWare's early, formative years. Like much of the industry, EA executives were growing increasingly enamored of so-called live-service games, such as 'Destiny' and 'Overwatch,' in which players continue to engage with and spend money on a title for months or even years after its initial release. With EA aiming to make a splash in the fast-growing category, BioWare poured resources into 'Anthem,' a live-service shooter game that checked all the right boxes. One day in October 2017, Laidlaw summoned his colleagues into a conference room and pulled out a few pricey bottles of whiskey. The next 'Dragon Age' sequel, he told the room, would also be pivoting to an online, live-service game — a decision from above that he disagreed with. He was resigning from the studio. The assembled staff stayed late through the night, drinking and reminiscing about the franchise they loved. 'I wish that pivot had never occurred,' Darrah would later recount on YouTube. 'EA said, 'Make this a live service.' We said, 'We don't know how to do that. We should basically start the project over.'' Former art director Matt Goldman replaced Laidlaw as creative director, and with a tiny team began pushing ahead on a new multiplayer version of 'Dragon Age' while everyone else helped to finish 'Anthem,' which was struggling to coalesce. Goldman pushed for a 'pulpy,' more lighthearted tone than previous entries, which suited an online game but was a drastic departure from the dark, dynamic stories that fans loved in the fantasy series. In February 2019, BioWare released 'Anthem.' Reviews were scathing, calling the game tedious and convoluted. Fans were similarly displeased. On social media, players demanded to know why a studio renowned for beloved stories and characters had made an online shooter with a scattershot narrative. In the wake of BioWare's second consecutive flop, the multiplayer version of 'Dragon Age' continued to take shape. While the previous games in the franchise had featured tactical combat, this one would be all action. Instead of quests that players would experience only once, it would be full of missions that could be replayed repeatedly with friends and strangers. Important characters couldn't die because they had to persist for multiple players across never-ending gameplay. As the game evolved over the next two years, the failure of 'Anthem' hovered over the studio. Were they making the same mistakes? Some BioWare employees scoffed that they were simply building ''Anthem' with dragons.' Throughout 2020, the pandemic disrupted the game's already fraught development. In December, Hudson, the head of the studio, and Darrah, the head of the franchise, resigned. Shortly thereafter, Gary McKay, BioWare's new studio head, revealed yet another shift in strategy. Moving forward, the next 'Dragon Age' would no longer be multiplayer. 'We were thinking, 'Does this make sense, does this play into our strengths, or is this going to be another challenge we have to face?'' McKay told Bloomberg News. 'No, we need to get back to what we're really great at.' In theory, the reversion back to the series' tried-and-true, single-player format should have been welcome news inside BioWare. But there was a catch. Typically, this kind of pivot would be coupled with a reset and a period of pre-production allowing the designers to formulate a new vision for the game. Instead, the team was asked to change the game's fundamental structure and recast the entire story on the fly, according to people familiar with the new marching orders. They were given a year and a half to finish and told to aim for as wide a market as possible. This strict deadline became a recurring problem. The development team would make decisions believing that they had less than a year to release the game, which severely limited the stories they could tell and the world they could build. Then the title would inevitably be delayed a few months, at which point they'd be stuck with those old decisions with no chance to stop and reevaluate what was working. At the end of 2022, amid continually dizzying leadership changes, the studio started distributing an 'alpha' build of 'Dragon Age' to get feedback internally and from outside playtesters. According to people familiar with the process, the reactions were concerning. The game's biggest problem, early players agreed, was a lack of satisfying choices and consequences. Previous BioWare titles had presented players with gut-wrenching decisions. Which allies to save? Which factions to spare? Which enemies to slay? Such dilemmas made fans feel like they were shaping the narrative — historically, a big draw for many BioWare games. But the multiplayer roots of 'Dragon Age' limited such choices, according to people familiar with the development. BioWare delayed the game's release again while the team shoehorned in a few major decisions, such as which of two cities to save from a dragon attack. But because most of the parameters were already well established, the designers struggled to pair the newly retrofitted choices for players with meaningful consequences downstream. In 2023, to help finish game, BioWare brought in a second, internal team, which was working on the next 'Mass Effect.' For decades there'd been tension between the two well-established camps, known for their starkly divergent ways of doing things. BioWare developers like to joke that the 'Dragon Age' crew was like a pirate ship, meandering and sometimes traveling off course but eventually reaching the port. In contrast, the 'Mass Effect' group was called the USS Enterprise, after the 'Star Trek' ship, because commands were issued straight from the top and executed zealously. As the 'Mass Effect' directors took control, they scoffed that the 'Dragon Age' squad had been doing a shoddy job and began excluding their leaders from pivotal meetings, according to people familiar with the internal friction. Over time, the 'Mass Effect' team went on to overhaul parts of the game and design a number of additional scenes, including a rich, emotional finale that players loved. But even changes that appeared to improve the game stoked the simmering rancor inside BioWare, infuriating 'Dragon Age' leaders who had been told they didn't have the budget for such big, ambitious swings. 'It always seemed that, when the 'Mass Effect' team made its demands in meetings with EA regarding the resources it needed, it got its way,' said David Gaider, a former lead writer on the 'Dragon Age' franchise who left before development of the new game started. 'But 'Dragon Age' always had to fight against headwinds.' Early testers and 'Mass Effect' leads complained about the game's snarky tone — a style of video game storytelling, once ascendant, that was quickly falling out of fashion in pop culture but had been part of Goldman's vision for the multiplayer game. Worried that 'Dragon Age' could face the same outcome as 'Forspoken' — a recent title that had been hammered over its impertinent banter — BioWare leaders ordered a belated rewrite of the game's dialogue to make it sound more serious. (In the end, the resulting tonal inconsistencies would only add to the game's poor reception with fans.) A mass layoff at BioWare and a mandate to work overtime depleted morale while a voice actors' strike limited the writers' ability to revise the dialogue and create new scenes. An initial trailer made the next 'Dragon Age' seem more like 'Fortnite' than a dark fantasy role-playing game, triggering concerns that EA didn't know how to market the game. When 'Dragon Age: The Veilguard' finally premiered on Halloween after many internal delays, some staff members thought there was a lot to like, including the game's new combat system. But players were less impressed, and sales sputtered. 'The reactions of the fan base are mixed, to put it gently,' said Caitie, a popular 'Dragon Age' YouTuber. 'Some, like myself, adore it for various reasons. Others feel utterly betrayed by certain design choices.' Following the layoffs and staff reassignments at BioWare earlier in the year, a small team of a few dozen employees is working on the next 'Mass Effect.' After three high-profile failures in a row, questions linger about EA's commitment to the studio. In May, the company relabeled its Edmonton headquarters from a BioWare office to a hub for all EA staff in the area. Historically, BioWare has never been the most important studio at EA, which generates more than $7 billion in annual revenue largely from its sports games and shooters. Depending on the timing of its launches, BioWare typically accounts for just 5% of EA's annual bookings, according to estimates by Colin Sebastian, an analyst with Robert W. Baird & Co. Even so, there may be strategic reasons for EA to keep supporting BioWare. Single-player role-playing games are expensive to make but can lead to huge windfalls when successful, as demonstrated by recent hits such as 'Cyberpunk 2077,' 'Elden Ring' and 'Baldur's Gate 3.' In order to grow, EA needs more than just sports franchises, said TD Cowen analyst Doug Creutz. Trying to fix its fantasy-focused studio may be easier than starting something new. 'That said, if they shuttered the doors tomorrow I wouldn't be totally surprised,' Creutz added. 'It has been over a decade since they produced a hit.' Schreier writes for Bloomberg.
The Star
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Star
Inside the 'Dragon Age' debacle that gutted EA's BioWare studio
In early November, on the eve of the crucial holiday shopping season, staffers at the video-game studio BioWare were feeling optimistic. After an excruciating development cycle, they had finally released their latest game, Dragon Age: The Veilguard , and the early reception was largely positive. The role-playing game was topping sales charts on Steam, and solid, if not spectacular, reviews were rolling in. But in the weeks that followed, the early buzz cooled as players delved deeper into the fantasy world, and some BioWare employees grew anxious. For months, everyone at the subsidiary of the video-game publisher Electronic Arts Inc had been under intense pressure. The studio's previous two games, Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem , had flopped, and there were rumors that if Dragon Age underperformed, BioWare might become another of EA's many casualties. Not long after Christmas, the bad news surfaced. EA announced in January that the new Dragon Age had only reached 1.5 million players, missing the company's expectations by 50%. The holiday performance of another recently released title, EA Sports FC 2025 , was also subpar, compounding the problem. As a result of the struggling titles, EA chief executive officer Andrew Wilson explained, the company would be significantly lowering its sales forecast for the fiscal year ahead. EA's share price promptly plunged 18%. ' Dragon Age had a high-quality launch and was well-reviewed by critics and those who played,' Wilson later said on an earnings call. 'However, it did not resonate with a broad enough audience in this highly competitive market.' Days after the sales revision, EA laid off a chunk of BioWare's staff at the studio's headquarters in Edmonton, Canada, and permanently transferred many of the remaining workers to other divisions. For the storied, 30-year-old game maker, it was a stunning fall that left many fans wondering how things had gone so haywire – and what might come next for the stricken studio. According to interviews with nearly two dozen people who worked on Dragon Age: The Veilguard , there were several reasons behind its failure, including marketing misfires, poor word of mouth and a 10-year gap since the previous title. Above all, sources point to the rebooting of the product from a single-player game to a multiplayer one – and then back again – a switcheroo that muddled development and inflated the title's budget, they say, ultimately setting the stage for EA's potentially unrealistic sales expectations. A spokesperson for EA declined to comment. The union between BioWare and EA started off with lofty aspirations. In 2007, EA executives announced they were acquiring BioWare and another gaming studio in a deal worth US$860mil. The goal was to diversify their slate of games, which was heavy in sports titles, like Madden NFL , and light in the kind of adventure and role-playing games that BioWare was known for. Initially, it looked like a smart move thanks to a string of big hits. In 2014, BioWare released Dragon Age: Inquisition , the third installment in a popular action series dropping players in a semi-open world full of magic, elves and fire-spewing dragons. The fantasy title went on to win the much-coveted Game of the Year Award and sell 12 million copies, according to its executive producer Mark Darrah – a major validation of EA's diversification strategy. Before long, Darrah and Mike Laidlaw, the creative director, began kicking around ideas for the next Dragon Age installment – code name: Joplin – aiming for a game that would be smaller in scope. But before much could get done, BioWare shifted the studio's focus to more pressing titles coming down the pike. In 2017, BioWare released Mass Effect: Andromeda , the fourth installment in a big-budget action series set in space. Unlike its critically successful predecessors, the game received mediocre reviews and was widely mocked by fans. A few months after the disappointing release, the head of BioWare stepped down and was soon replaced by Microsoft Inc's Casey Hudson, an alumni of BioWare's early, formative years. Like much of the industry, EA executives were growing increasingly enamoured of so-called live-service games, such as Destiny and Overwatch , in which players continue to engage with and spend money on a title for months or even years after its initial release. With EA aiming to make a splash in the fast-growing category, BioWare poured resources into Anthem , a live-service shooter game that checked all the right boxes. One day in October 2017, Laidlaw summoned his colleagues into a conference room and pulled out a few pricey bottles of whisky. The next Dragon Age sequel, he told the room, would also be pivoting to an online, live-service game – a decision from above that he disagreed with. He was resigning from the studio. The assembled staff stayed late through the night, drinking and reminiscing about the franchise they loved. 'I wish that pivot had never occurred,' Darrah would later recount on YouTube. 'EA said, 'Make this a live service'. We said, 'We don't know how to do that. We should basically start the project over'.' Former art director Matt Goldman replaced Laidlaw as creative director, and with a tiny team began pushing ahead on a new multiplayer version of Dragon Age – code name: Morrison – while everyone else helped to finish Anthem , which was struggling to coalesce. Goldman pushed for a 'pulpy', more lighthearted tone than previous entries, which suited an online game but was a drastic departure from the dark, dynamic stories that fans loved in the fantasy series. In February 2019, BioWare released Anthem . Reviews were scathing, calling the game tedious and convoluted. Fans were similarly displeased. On social media, players demanded to know why a studio renowned for beloved stories and characters had made an online shooter with a scattershot narrative. In the wake of BioWare's second consecutive flop, the multiplayer version of Dragon Age continued to take shape. While the previous games in the franchise had featured tactical combat, this one would be all action. Instead of quests that players would only experience once, it would be full of missions that could be replayed repeatedly with friends and strangers. Important characters couldn't die because they had to persist for multiple players across never-ending gameplay. As the game evolved over the next two years, the failure of Anthem hovered over the studio. Were they making the same mistakes? Some BioWare employees scoffed that they were simply building ' Anthem with dragons'. Throughout 2020, the pandemic disrupted the game's already fraught development. In December, Hudson, the head of the studio, and Darrah, the head of the franchise, resigned. Shortly thereafter, Gary McKay, BioWare's new studio head, revealed yet another shift in strategy. Moving forward, the next Dragon Age would no longer be multiplayer. 'We were thinking, 'Does this make sense, does this play into our strengths, or is this going to be another challenge we have to face?'' McKay later told Bloomberg News. 'No, we need to get back to what we're really great at.' In theory, the reversion back to Dragon Age 's tried-and-true, single-player format should have been welcome news inside BioWare. But there was a catch. Typically, this kind of pivot would be coupled with a reset and a period of pre-production allowing the designers to formulate a new vision for the game. Instead, the team was asked to change the game's fundamental structure and recast the entire story on the fly, according to people familiar with the new marching orders. They were given a year and a half to finish and told to aim for as wide a market as possible. This strict deadline became a recurring problem. The development team would make decisions believing that they had less than a year to release the game, which severely limited the stories they could tell and the world they could build. Then the title would inevitably be delayed a few months, at which point they'd be stuck with those old decisions with no chance to stop and reevaluate what was working. At the end of 2022, amid continually dizzying leadership changes, the studio started distributing an 'alpha' build of Dragon Age to get feedback internally and from outside playtesters. According to people familiar with the process, the reactions were concerning. The game's biggest problem, early players agreed, was a lack of satisfying choices and consequences. Previous BioWare titles had presented players with gut-wrenching decisions. Which allies to save? Which factions to spare? Which enemies to slay? Such dilemmas made fans feel like they were shaping the narrative – historically, a big draw for many BioWare games. But Dragon Age 's multiplayer roots limited such choices, according to people familiar with the development. BioWare delayed the game's release again while the team shoehorned in a few major decisions, such as which of two cities to save from a dragon attack. But because most of the parameters were already well established, the designers struggled to pair the newly retrofitted choices for players with meaningful consequences downstream. In 2023, to help finish Dragon Age , BioWare brought in a second, internal team, which was working on the next Mass Effect game. For decades there'd been tension between the two well-established camps, known for their starkly divergent ways of doing things. BioWare developers like to joke that the Dragon Age crew was like a pirate ship, meandering and sometimes travelling off course but eventually reaching the port. In contrast, the Mass Effect group was called the USS Enterprise, after the Star Trek ship, because commands were issued straight down from the top and executed zealously. As the Mass Effect directors took control, they scoffed that the Dragon Age squad had been doing a shoddy job and began excluding their leaders from pivotal meetings, according to people familiar with the internal friction. Over time, the Mass Effect team went on to overhaul parts of the game and design a number of additional scenes, including a rich, emotional finale that players loved. But even changes that appeared to improve the game stoked the simmering rancor inside BioWare, infuriating Dragon Age leaders who had been told they didn't have the budget for such big, ambitious swings. 'It always seemed that, when the Mass Effect team made its demands in meetings with EA regarding the resources it needed, it got its way,' said David Gaider, a former lead writer on the Dragon Age franchise who left before development of the new game started. 'But Dragon Age always had to fight against headwinds.' Early testers and Mass Effect leads complained about the game's snarky tone – a style of video-game storytelling, once ascendant, that was quickly falling out of fashion in pop culture but had been part of Goldman's vision for the multiplayer game. Worried that Dragon Age could face the same outcome as Forspoken – a recent title that had been hammered over its impertinent banter – BioWare leaders ordered a belated rewrite of the game's dialogue to make it sound more serious. (In the end, the resulting tonal inconsistencies would only add to the game's poor reception with fans.) A mass layoff at BioWare and a mandate to work overtime depleted morale while a voice actors strike limited the writers' ability to revise the dialogue and create new scenes. An initial trailer made the next Dragon Age seem more like Fortnite than a dark fantasy role-playing game, triggering concerns that EA didn't know how to market the game. When Dragon Age: The Veilguard finally premiered on Halloween 2024 after many internal delays, some staff members thought there was a lot to like, including the game's new combat system. But players were less impressed, and sales sputtered. 'The reactions of the fan base are mixed, to put it gently,' said Caitie, a popular Dragon Age YouTuber. 'Some, like myself, adore it for various reasons. Others feel utterly betrayed by certain design choices.' Following the layoffs and staff reassignments at BioWare earlier in the year, a small team of a few dozen employees is now working on the next Mass Effect . After three high-profile failures in a row, questions linger about EA's commitment to the studio. In May, the company relabeled its Edmonton headquarters from a BioWare office to a hub for all EA staff in the area. Historically, BioWare has never been the most important studio at EA, which generates more than US$7bil (RM29.70bil) in annual revenue largely from its sports games and shooters. Depending on the timing of its launches, BioWare typically accounts for just 5% of EA's annual bookings, according to estimates by Colin Sebastian, an analyst with Robert W. Baird & Co. Even so, there may be strategic reasons for EA to keep supporting BioWare. Single-player role-playing games are expensive to make but can lead to huge windfalls when successful, as demonstrated by recent hits like Cyberpunk 2077 , Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate 3 . In order to grow, EA needs more than just sports franchises, said TD Cowen analyst Doug Creutz. Trying to fix its fantasy-focused studio may be easier than starting something new. 'That said, if they shuttered the doors tomorrow I wouldn't be totally surprised,' Creutz added. 'It has been over a decade since they produced a hit.' – Bloomberg
Forbes
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
New Report Details 'Dragon Age: The Veilguard' Failure, Raises Questions About Bioware's Future
Dragon Age: The Veilguard If there's a AAA game that bombs hard in the market, you can bet that Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier will eventually figure out why that happened. And now Schreier has just published his post-mortem on what went on with Dragon Age: The Veilguard, the 2024 release that only got half the players EA wanted, resulted in mass layoffs, and appears to have killed the IP altogether. Some of this has been known to some extent, some is definitely new. I highly recommend you read the whole piece here. One throughline is something we've heard about in bits and pieces before. Because development on Dragon Age: The Veilguard spanned 10 years, it got caught up in live service/multiplayer trend-chasing. When the game was being conceived, of course, the idea was to make it another traditional single-player RPG. But as games like Destiny were starting to take off, multiplayer games rose in popularity. So, there was a pivot to that format. Then, later, when it wasn't working, they had to pivot back to a regular RPG but without being able to start over, just hammering the multiplayer stuff to try to fit into the single-player mold again. The result of that was a mish-mash of pieces that were pulled from both types of games. Other issues compounded this, like the change in tone to be more 'snarky' than the series had been traditionally, and a lack of significant choices. Things like the big 'which city to save' choice was jammed into the game late in production. FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder There are also segments about how BioWare brought in Mass Effect team members to try and salvage what had become a mess, but there was only so much they could do. Dragon Age: The Veilguard The end result of all this is harrowing. The piece ends with Cowen analyst Doug Creutz saying, '[I]f they shuttered the doors tomorrow I wouldn't be totally surprised. It has been over a decade since they produced a hit.' That's true. It really has been since Dragon Age: Inquisition, given that Anthem and Mass Effect: Andromeda were in the middle. Now, The Veilguard is another miss. As big as Anthem? Perhaps not, but it did kill a brand that BioWare had worked on since 2009. If the next Mass Effect game does not land (which still does not have a release date), Cowen may be right, and there's little reason to think that EA would want to keep the now miss-producing studio in operation. Check out Jason's full piece here, which has a lot more detail on the situation. I can't say I'm surprised about any of this. Even if I personally liked the game more than most, it was easy to see the overall reception after release was poor, and clearly something had gone wrong in development. Many things, it turns out. Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Bluesky and Instagram. Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
