Dragon Age: The Veilguard was so 'successful' it's being given away for free

EA's Dragon Age: The Veilguard will be available to claim from March 4 for PlayStation Plus subscribers, according to a new post on the PlayStation Blog.

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Dragon Age: The Veilguard was released less than four months ago, and according to EA, the title's launch was "high-quality," and the game was "well-reviewed by critics and those who played," however, it "did not resonate with a broad enough audience in this highly competitive market." EA's chief financial officer, Stuart Canfield, also stated the game "underperformed."

Looking at the SteamDB charts, we can see that "underperformed" may be a slight understatement, as Dragon Age: The Veilguard's all-time peak was 89,418 players on November 3, 2024. Now, the title's 24-hour peak has just 2,381 players.

While the SteamDB numbers are anecdotal as they don't take into account the players exclusively using the EA launcher, they are a decent representation of the title's popularity. So, despite the "high-quality" launch, Veilguard has completely failed at retaining players and attracting any new ones, which has now resulted in EA deciding to give the game away on PlayStation for free. Only a few weeks ago, BioWare announced it was laying off many developers who had worked on the underwhelming Veilguard.

Judging by these past moves by BioWare and now EA giving away the title for free, especially after less than four since its official release, I think it's relatively safe to say that Veilguard was a catastrophic failure for both BioWare and EA -- even though "critics" gave it the thumbs up.