In a move that highlights just how disastrous Dragon Age: The Veilguard has been for both EA and BioWare, Sony has announced that the game will be available to PlayStation Plus Essential subscribers on March 4, 2025, just over four months after it had released.
This rapid addition to the PS Plus catalog, a mere 123 days post-release, signals a severe collapse, one largely attributed to the game’s development team and, in particular, its director. While countless gaming outlets praised it as a “return to form” for BioWare due to its focus on inclusivity, The Veilguard instead became a focal point for controversy and disappointment.
The game’s abysmal player retention and poor sales have seemingly forced EA to seek whatever value remains by offering it for free as Sony foots the bill.
At the core of the game’s downfall lies a series of creative blunders, with the most significant being the direction imposed by its leadership. Instead of delivering a compelling Dragon Age experience, The Veilguard prioritizes heavy-handed messaging and forced diversity over quality storytelling and engaging gameplay, resulting in an RPG that feels more like a platform for ideological posturing than an immersive fantasy adventure.
One of the most notorious moments in Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a scene where companion Taash comes out to her family as non-binary, injecting modern identity politics into a medieval fantasy setting. While likely intended as a meaningful character moment, it instead came across as an awkward and forced attempt at social commentary, reinforcing the belief that modern game development prioritizes politics over substance.
However, the director’s influence, while central, is far from the only issue. The game’s writing is abysmal, a far cry from the rich, nuanced narratives of previous Dragon Age titles. Characters lack depth, dialogue is stilted and awkward, and the plot crumbles under the weight of its own misguided ambitions.
At the helm of these changes is director Corinne Busche, a self-described “Queerosexual Gendermancer” who previously worked on The Sims and has been outspoken about their identity, bringing their identity into The Veilguard in ways that detract from the series’ core appeal, what with the player having the ability to romance any of the games several pansexual companions.
Notably, the character creator for The Veilguard includes options for transgender top surgery scars, yet fails to provide basic customization features like adjusting body proportions, a creative decision that serves as a deliberate snub towards well endowed biological women who were clearly not the target audience for this game.
Development on The Veilguard reportedly spanned six to nine years, but the final product suggests a lack of cohesive vision. Busche’s sudden rise to the director’s chair, following the departure of more experienced senior staff, raises questions about EA’s priorities, a shift likely motivated by cost-cutting, internal restructuring, only resulting in a desire to push a specific creative agenda.
Beyond its blatant descent into ESG-backed ideological grandstanding, The Veilguard also strays far from the gameplay roots that once defined Dragon Age. The game leans heavily into more action-focused mechanics, complete with breakable barrels spilling health potions, a jarring departure from the original combat longtime fans expected.
Fan backlash was immediate and intense, with many citing the gameplay overhaul as the final betrayal in a long list of grievances. Combined with underwhelming sales, reportedly half of EA’s projections, with engagement figures hovering around 1.5 million (inflated by free trials and refunds), the game’s fate was all but sealed.
BioWare’s subsequent announcement that there were no plans for post-launch DLC, a first for the series, only reinforced the perception that internal expectations of The Veilguard leading up to its release weren’t great enough to justify continued development, the game being deemed a financial failure. Given the game’s estimated budget of over $100 million excluding marketing and upkeep costs its rapid fall from grace is staggering.
Originally teased as Dragon Age 4 in December 2018, it’s reasonable to assume the project had already undergone months of pre-production beforehand meaning the game could’ve very well have had over seven years of development allocated towards it at a minimum. Since its release, EA’s stock has fallen 10% and “Corinne” Busche had already been let go from the studio.
Now, The Veilguard finds itself lumped in with titles like Sonic Colors: Ultimate and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection on PS Plus, a move that reeks of damage control. For a AAA game with a budget exceeding $100 million, this represents a stunning downfall.
The blame lies squarely with the priorities of BioWare’s activist development team and the failed leadership of Electronic Arts, but majority of the blame lies upon the games director, whose insistence on pushing ideology over entertainment resulted in yet another once-beloved franchise being politically assassinated and rejected by its core audience.
If nothing else, EA, BioWare, and Andrew Busche unintentionally did the gaming industry a favor with Dragon Age: The Veilguard by further exposing the ongoing corruption within access media and video game journalism.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard showed that the entrenched biases within games journalism remain unchanged. Upon release, The Veilguard was met with glowing reviews from multiple media outlets, all echoing the same carefully coordinated narrative: that the game was “a return to form” for BioWare and the Dragon Age franchise.
These same media outlets also attempted to frame Dragon Age: The Veilguard as a “record-breaking” success on Steam, conveniently ignoring the fact that previous Dragon Age titles didn’t even arrive on the platform until 2020. Nevertheless, they pushed the narrative that this big-budget AAA RPG, one that had been in active development since at least 2018 was a triumph, despite only managing to reach a rather underwhelming peak player count of 89,418 on Steam.
For a AAA RPG, these numbers are shockingly low, signaling that the game failed to reach the multi-million sales milestone necessary to break even. Daily player counts today further confirm that Dragon Age: The Veilguard struggled to capture consumer interest, due to both its underwhelming narrative and the forced inclusion of pandering elements that repulsed potential players.
The game has already faded into obscurity.
Gamers, however, won’t forget that this title was a commercial flop, so much so that Sony, desperate to pad its thin lineup of PlayStation 5 “exclusives,” now bound to the PC are practically giving it away via PlayStation Plus.
Nor will they forget how journalist Jason Schreier, despite his history of sitting on knowledge of Activision Blizzard’s toxic workplace culture for years, in exchange for retaining industry perks eagerly championed the game’s early sales figures, mocking critics with his infamous “Go Woke, go bro—err, top the charts” tweet.
He later admitted he didn’t particularly enjoy the game but took pleasure in watching “chuds get dunked on,” underscoring the prevailing hostility within the Western gaming industry, where developers and journalists alike belittle their audience, yet still expect them to pay for their horrible products laden with ideological messaging.
While the game was a “critical success” thanks to overwhelmingly positive reviews from biased media shills, the reality is that Dragon Age: The Veilguard was far from a commercial win.
Despite media spin, EA has yet to release actual sales figures, instead reporting that the game saw 1.5 million players, including those accessing it via free trials and EA Play subscriptions to artificially inflate engagement metrics of which even still it performed dismally compared to the figures needed to break even.
The fact that Sony is now offering this high-budget release as a PlayStation Plus freebie speaks volumes. Still, PlayStation users may find themselves more excited to revisit Sonic Colors: Ultimate or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection than to engage with this so-called blockbuster.
