Dragon Age: The Veilguard Comes Out Swinging, Already EA's Biggest Single Player Game on Steam

Dragons are all the rage

by · Push Square
Game Profile

https://images.pushsquare.com/eb45512b8e6c8/dragon-age-the-veilguard-cover.cover_small.jpg
Title:
Dragon Age: The Veilguard
System:
PlayStation 5
Also Available For:
Xbox Series X|S
Publisher:
Electronic Arts
Developer:
BioWare
Genre:
Action, RPG
Players:
1
Release Date:
PlayStation 5
https://static.pushsquare.com/themes/base/images/flags/us.gif 31st Oct 2024
https://static.pushsquare.com/themes/base/images/flags/eu.gif 31st Oct 2024
Series:
Dragon Age
Also Known As:
Dragon Age: Dreadwolf
Reviews:
Dragon Age: The Veilguard (PS5) - The Best BioWare Game Since Mass Effect 3
Guide:
Dragon Age: The Veilguard Guide: Key Help for BioWare's RPG
Where to buy:
Buy on Amazon

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is now available, and early indicators point to BioWare's RPG being a hit, managing to unseat Star Wars Jedi: Survivor to become EA's biggest single-player launch on Steam, with over 70,000 concurrents recorded, and that ahead of the weekend. While somewhat split critically, at least on Valve's egalitarian platform, it seems players love the game, which at the time of writing enjoys a Mostly Positive rating drawn from over 1,200 user reviews.

IGN ran the numbers, and they're pretty impressive when you consider (not counting Mass Effect Legendary Edition, which was always going to be a crowd-pleaser) that BioWare's last two games were Mass Effect: Andromeda and ANTHEM, neither of which were received nearly so warmly. We quite enjoyed The Veilguard, too, and you can read our full thoughts in our review.

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Your ultimate Dragon Age: The Veilguard resource

Will you be picking up Dragon Age: The Veilguard? Are you glad to see a seemingly resurgent BioWare? Begin your own adventures in the comments section below, and be sure to take a look at our Dragon Age: The Veilguard guide.

[source store.steampowered.com, via ign.com]

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About Khayl Adam

Khayl Adam is Push Square's roving Australian correspondent, a reporter tasked with scouring the internet for the richest, most succulent PlayStation stories. With five years of experience as a freelance journalist and mercenary wordsmith, RPGs are his first great love, but strategy and tactics games are a close second, genres in which he is only too happy to specialize.

Comments 60

I’m glad it’s being received well, particularly on Steam. I’m roughly six hours in, having just beat the Lyrium Ghoul boss fight and think the whole experience has been amazing. The game is very well paced, the combat is crunchy and a lot more satisfying than I expected, and the story has some interesting beats. I can’t wait to play more tomorrow.

A certain crowd won't be happy 😂 Wish i could join in on the fun but well the £700 came out yesterday for the Pro meaning no new games for me this month haha.

Anthem didnt do too badly it sold 5 million copies

We love to see it, got my physical copy and will be one of the games I dive into once the Pro comes!

I'll most likely pick this up in a future sale for about £8. From everything I've seen of it so far I think that the writing and dialogue sound just as dreadful as ME Andromeda's.

No, no, no, that cannot be right. The Internet assured me this game would crash and burn. It assured me that it was going to be a steaming pile of garbage that was to be the nail in Bioware's proverbial coffin.

Surely the collective hivemind of the internet wasn't wrong, was it...?

A bit disingenuous not to compare it to other big single player releases is it not? I mean mass effect was basically a port and Anthem was straight up terrible. Sure it did decently for a Bioware game but Bioware haven't been doing all too hot lately and more importantly will 70k satisfy the money hungry execs at EA?

Was only able to get an hour in last night but enjoying it so far. Can't wait to get stuck in later.

SkillUp’s review sealed it for me, as I usually vibe with him, so not for me but I’m glad it’s doing well to annoy the X lunatics.

"IGN ran the numbers", lol. IGN are about as trustworthy as a fart in diarrhoea clinic.

@ShadowofSparta it takes one opinion of a random YouTuber to make all your life decisions

Glad it didn't Concord. Apart from a handful of cringy/preachy scenes it looks to be an OK action rpg game if you're a fan of modern Bioware.

A comparable game would be Dragon's Dogma 2 which peaked at a 228K concurrent users on steam. That translated to Capcom being happy with the release/sales. DA:TV might still pick up and further grow during the weekend, we'll see I guess.

But when all is said and done, it's not a flop/failure or a runaway success. Hopefully this will put a sock in it when it comes to both sides of the "culture war". And most important of all I hope you all are enjoying your time with the game and get some bang for your bucks. 🎮

The last game that released on steam from bioware is ME legendary edition And before that the original 2 dragonage games. So youre basically comparing to over decade old games and a remaster. A bit disingenuous.

Maybe compare to other big releases this year like black myth which had over 2 million players or even games like space marines 2 which had over 200,000.

When you actually compare, this launch ain't great.

Get woke go broke am I right fellas?

I suspect the number of sales will fall sharply as the number of refunds creep up.

Not that I have a horse in this race, but a peak of 70k concurrent players isn't a whole lot for a game with such a huge budget, no? Typically you can estimate the actual sales number to be several times the peak amount of concurrent players, but even then we're probably talking about something in the ballpark of several hundred thousand sales on Steam.

For comparison's sake, Metaphor sold 1 million units on its first day across all platforms and peaked at 85k concurrent players on Steam. Metaphor visibly had a far lower budget than Veilguard so it might well be a commercial success if it gets two or three million lifetime sales, but Veilguard needs a lot more than that.

Granted, as the article points out, that 70k number will probably go up during the weekend, but I don't think it'll be enough to make a difference.

@Victor_Meldrew Its at mostly positive on Steam so i highly doubt it.

@Slayer25c if all your life decisions are games

I mean, Baldur's Gate 3 was 472,000 on launch day. Call of Duty 6 somewhere around 229,000.

Probably apples to oranges, but do with those numbers what you will. I guess time will tell whether EA considers it a financial success. Apparently publishers are expecting bigger and bigger numbers these days as AAA costs balloon.

Loved Origins and Inquisition too to a lesser extent, but still on the fence about this game due to personal qualms with the art style and lighter tone. I've waited 10 years, I can wait another 12 months for a definitive edition.

I look forward to the impending PushSquare article about Veilguard getting review bombed. I really wish there was an option to filter out all the 1/10 and 10/10 user reviews on sites like Metacritic. Eliminate the noise.

All those brave culture warrior soldiers will be battling it out against one another in the review sections of every aggregate website shortly. Wish we could throw them all on an island sort of Hunger Games style and just watch them enact their holy war against one another in real time away from the comfort of a computer or phone. Now wouldn't that be a sight to see?

EA games released exclusively on their own app until 2020. So to claim this is their biggest launch on the platform while a good headline really isn't as good as they make out.

70k for a AAA day 1 release isn't really big numbers either.

@Orpheus79V

If you say that three times fast and turn off the lights, the ghost of Concord will appear behind you in the mirror.

@Smash41 Came here to say this.

This is exactly the “best BW game since mass effect 3” type of comment.

If you look under thr skin even a little bit you know its BS, but average joe comes out thinking its GOTY material. Guess the selective review code distribution really worked :/

@Jey887 Anthem sold pretty well initially, would you consider it a good game?

Bought this, but I have made the decision not to play until i have my Pro next week (well, after i have done the kid in the sweetshop thing of looking at a few of my old games enhanced on Pro!).

The question is if they can keep the momentum up, and considering the word on the ground is mixed at best it may drop off faster than you think. It feels like everyone is calling this a success prematurely just to spite a certain group of people.

I'm sure if we was looking at the concurrent players on PlayStation and Xbox, it would be higher than steam.

70,000 concurrent players for a SP game on Thursday isn't bad, and It might go up at the weekend. This isn't a flop or a runaway success, just a decent game doing decently well.

Ultimately what matters is that you enjoy the game, and if you don't that's also okay. If you aren't interested move on to something you are. EA don't need armchair accountants to speculate for them.

@Khayl

@mikeawmids what would you (or others) say is the most reliable source? (Genuine question by the way!), Thanks

I do not understand why critics are split. I only got a couple hours in but this game is good! Ill probably think its great or better by the time Im done.

@Darylb88

You are absolutely right, EA doesn't need us to speculate in this video game website comment section on an article about game sales. I mean it's just shameful, really.

-slowly leans back in armchair-

Now then, where were we...

Im happy that dragon age the veilguard is doing incredible.bioware is back like i been saying for months.word up son

@ApostateMage That's pretty much my stand. It's got Games under £20 written all over it.

Uh, why does this news deserve a headline at all?

Monster Hunter Wilds beta is almost hitting the 500k milestone on Steam and I haven't seen any news about it.
Almost 500k concurrent people on a single platform, and its only the beta test.

I can't even begin to take the game seriously with what I've seen of the art style, level design, writing, and gameplay. I'll say it - I do want this game to fail commercially because I don't want it to become a blueprint for the next Mass Effect.

It's so weird to me that there are people WHO HAVE NOT PLAYED THE GAME YET who are still crapping on it and saying they hope it fails...like are you serious? That's pathetic.

Definitely not a game for me. Whether it is successful or not doesn't matter. This ain't Bioware, folks, and EA is easy to ignore. I'm looking forward to Avowed.

Phat shout! Gotta love it! Can’t wait to play this game!

@Blaze215 yup. Compare it to the biggest success of the year to see if it did well. Seems fair.

Gaslighting… when sales numbers are given the truth will be told.

I guess 70,000 people have a much higher tolerance for terrible writing than I do.

I think Elden Ring and my old DA experience is hurting my enjoyment of DA4. I'm 6 hours in, just ran into a semi-decent boss fight with my first death in the game and I'm slowly starting to enjoy it. I can't get past the 'something feels off', part of the experience. All the levels are extremely short and the game feels too rapid in it's storytelling. The combat is...ok, but I do like the semi-tactical ability to use companion skills. The 3 skill limit feels like some kind of moba. Some of the dialogue feels way off. Like someone translated Olde English into Twitter speak. Oddly, I find the protagonist to be the most annoying character so far, but that may be entirely on me. The story overall is pretty good, but I am very early still. I didn't watch or read a single review of the game since I knew I'd play it anyway. But I find myself wondering what all the hub-bub was about. On both sides. It's very ok. For some reason it reminds me a LOT of DA2. The short levels, the Spam A emphasis on combat. It's definetly not Inquisition with its semi-open world, all playable party and better dialogue. Currently 6.5/10. Hoping it gets better.

@Jey887 Andromeda sold 3.5 million copies first week, and 5 million overall.

Anthem sold 2 million copies first week, 5 million total.

70,000 players is about 3% of these sales so far.

Let's wait a week shall we?

@naruball I also compared to space marines, or did you miss that piece?

@UnlimitedSevens Stop proving my point haha

@ShadowofSparta Literally the only reviewer I trust.

@Jey887
I know right - there were so many angry people online confidently informing us that by "going woke" Bioware would be "going broke"... surely they can't have been wrong can they?

This game lets you create a non-binary character and choose your pronouns...and yet there seem to be loads of us out here buying it and loving it.

It's almost as if they were just an angry loud minority making a lot of noise about it on social media and comments sections.

@soyabean135876 "It's almost as if they were just an angry loud minority making a lot of noise about it on social media and comments sections."

Did you really had to formulate it like that when there is a really angry and even smaller minority every time you "misgender" someone?

The argument does not go just one way.

This is just Sony port numbers of their old games which we know don't sell very well on PC in the long run.

A better comparison would be dragons dogma 2 it is a recent game that had 228k concurrent on steam and took 2 weeks to sell 2.5 million on all platforms. Except DD2 obviously had a much lower budget than DAV.

Gamalytic has this estimated to have sold about 211k so far and even if it has done 3x that on console (doubt) which is actually not bad but not really that good for something that was originally highly anticipated and part of a massively popular franchise.

Circana & Dring will obviously be very kind with their statements about the sales, for that I have no doubt but I think we're going to be looking at Star Wars Outlaws flop numbers for DAV when all is said and done.

Steam count and Gamalytic aren't that reliable half the time though and sales could have already dropped off a cliff.

@DennisReynolds Yeah but that's only because Steam has been hard at work deleting bad reviews, even a lot of the one's that had some legitimate criticism of the game but conveniently leaving the ones that say they are just scoring it 5 stars to counteract any review bombing.

@tangyzesty Pathetic how? That's a strong word for how low stakes all of this is. You can watch multiple lengthy presentations on a game and know whether or not it's for you. If it's part of an existing IP, you can see how it deviates from its previous entries. You can gain understanding of the gameplay loop and identify elements in the game that make it a non-starter. Skill Up had a presentation that was compelling and quite honest.

If it's commercially successful, then this team with this skill set and this direction will go on to work on other projects. Bioware has said that assets working on DA:V will shift to the next Mass Effect. It stands to reason that if I don't want the next Mass Effect to resemble this game that I have absolutely no desire to support in any way, then yes, I want it to do poorly from a financial standpoint so that the developer can identify what caused the game to fail and not implement those things in the game that I would like to play.

And if none if that happens - if the game is a commercial smash hit and Bioware goes on to copy/paste 90% of this title's code in to Mass Effect - so be it. I won't play that either, and life will go on.

So much for the angry Keyboard Warriors. They have a lot to say for a bunch of people (or idiots) who haven't even played the game at all.

So much ***** being spouted out here from people who weren't going to play it anyway 😂

@MrMagic Source or are you just making up BS?

I plan to buy the game on sale but from what I've seen so far, it looks decent. Not great, but a decent enough romp to spend money on. Don't care at all about the "cultural" discourse around the game, those "keyboard warriors" can duke it where I don't see it, preferably in person at an arcade somewhere.

@DennisReynolds I saw a post with a big list of reviews that had what I would call legitimate criticism of the game. Which said go check Steam to check if these reviews are still there and I looked and they had been deleted but I did see plenty of reviews still there that people are posting just to counteract any review bombing.

Blatant comments like the game is just a 3 star game but I'm giving it a 5 because of review bombers or others like the game is a laggy mess for me despite what digital foundry said I can't get the game to run properly but I'll still give it 5 stars to own the chuds and incels.

There actually seems to be quite a lot of reverse review bombing going on for it which is working exceptionally well because of Steam deleting critical reviews and if the concurrent doesn't surpass launch day then we can assume there was quite a few refunds happening as well and that the game hasn't really sold well on steam at all.

Steam hasn't been deleting anything. Reviews I saw last night are still there 😂🤣

I know I'll like it and will buy it this afternoon. Skillup often reviews what he wanted rather than what was delivered and then goes on a rant - see his FF16 review for instance. Many reviewers I trust, including PJ on Pure Xbox, loved this title.
The Woke /Antiwoke discourse is as pathetic as all such conversations are and I ignore it as that's the only intelligent thing to do with such people from either side of that debate.

To anyone else who will be playing it along with me - I hope you like it!

Did you know that IGN has shares in PushSquare?

@MrMagic Show me a source of Steam deleting negative reviews for the game.

Seems like these are good numbers. Think people using other games as comparisons are overlooking some factors going against Veilguard. DD2 was more in the Elden Ring route where the world is the main draw and not the story, which is the case for Veilguard. Considering the reviews are good sitting around a 80-85 seems like the numbers line up. Want this game to do well so EA continues to make single player games which overall they have actually been doing a good job with in recent years.

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