A screenshot from Dragon Age: The Veilguard

Despite the pretty picture that the gaming access media has been trying to paint, Dragon Age: The Veilguard sales have reportedly been far below projections.

This information was first reported by YouTuber Endymion, citing an inside source close to the EA BioWare project.

 

“In total, what I’m told is that Veilguard may have sold overall so far anyway in the 500,000 range,” Endymion said in a video posted to his popular YouTube channel. “Which may sound good to some, but this is completely abysmal for a game of this level.”

These numbers would put Dragon Age: The Veilguard well below noted flops like Ubisoft’s Star Wars: Outlaws, which Ubisoft recently confirmed underperformed after selling over a million copies. According to Endymion, Veilguard would have to move several million units to be profitable.

“So, generally speaking, Veilguard is not a commercial success,” he said. “It needed to sell around the 4 to 5 million mark to make a profit at least. And, well, it’s not doing that.”

YouTuber SmashJT corroborated this information, citing his own source close to BioWare.

“After hearing that news from Endymion, I couldn’t help but reach out to a source at BioWare to find out if that was true,” SmashJT said in his own video, linked above. “And, yes, according to them this is confirmed. About 500,000 units have sold through, and they’ve had plenty returns as well. The numbers stated by Endymion are extremely accurate, signaling some seriously troubling times ahead for BioWare and EA.”

Endymion’s source also claimed knowledge of a staggering return rate for the game, reaching in excess of 30,000 units. But Veilguard’s woes started long before the game had even released.
A screenshot of Tash from Dragon Age: The Veilguard

A screenshot from Dragon Age: The Veilguard (2024), BioWare

“This is from my same source that I shared previous Dragon Age pre-order numbers with, which was in my video a few days back,” Endymion said. “Apparently, according to them, pre-orders for Veilguard were even less than initially thought. I told you in the last video they were roughly 115,000 total pre-orders across all platforms. That’s digital and physical by the way. And new info that my source has now told me that the numbers actually may have been too high. The number that they are hearing from people at EA now is that it was actually between 70 to 75,000 pre-orders in total before release, which is, yeah, not good at all.”

SmashJT also gave some additional insight into the troubles facing the once-beloved studio that received critical praise for titles like Star Wars: Knights of The Old Republic, Mass Effect, and Jade Empire.

“The game was in development for the better part of a decade, and developers these days aren’t cheap — especially in the US,” he said in a post on his website. “With the rumored numbers so far below that threshold, the reality for BioWare’s future… looks grim.”
An elven god from Dragon Age: The Veilguard

A screenshot from Dragon Age: The Veilguard (2024), BioWare

It has apparently gotten so bad that games journalists who at first touted the game’s success have fallen silent. Some are even going so far as to scrub their praise from social media.

Former World of Warcraft team lead Mark Kern, AKA Grummz, caught legacy media reporter Jason Schreier deleting a braggadocios post on X where he touted that Veilguard was topping the charts.

 

While the game’s initial 89,000+ peak concurrent players on Steam might have been cause for celebration, it failed to grow from there and has been in freefall ever since. In its second weekend, as of this writing, the game has a 24-hour peak of 69,063 players.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard Concurrent Players on Steam

The Concurrent Player Count for Dragon Age: The Veilguard on Steam as of Nov. 10, 2024, Steam

BioWare and EA have yet to make an official statement refuting these leaked numbers. Typically, game studios will try to celebrate major milestones after a big release like this. The fact that we’ve heard nothing from the studio in more than a week doesn’t bode well for the future of the Dragon Age franchise.

Do you believe these Dragon Age: The Veilguard sales numbers? Do you think there’s a future for the franchise beyond Veilguard? Sound off and let us know!