Approximately 14% of physical pre-orders for Dragon Age: The Veilguard at a national retailer were reportedly cancelled in the days leading up to the games release.

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

YouTuber Endymion revealed that a retail insider shared with him that 956 pre-orders of a total of 6,793 were cancelled of 6,793 or 14%.

He wrote on X, “So a source who works in the retail space showed me how many pre orders got cancelled for Dragon Age Veilguard in the last few days. This is from a major store with over 900 locations in America. Veilguard pre orders vs cancellations by platform: 1. Deluxe XBOX Versions: 695 Preorders, 108 cancelled 2. Normal XBOX Copy: 885 Preorders, 128 cancelled 3. Deluxe PS5 Version: 1872 Preorders, 254 cancelled 4. Normal PS5 Version: 3341 Preorders, 466 cancelled”

“So around 14-15% of each version of Veilguard was cancelled in the last few days by customers across these 900 stores within America alone,” he added. “I’m also told by another source preorders in general were very low, way less than 500K, closer to 200K or less in total. Yikes.”

In a subsequent post, Endymion clarified, “I should reiterate for anyone these are PHYSICAL preorders. But I’m told in total with physical/digital it was nowhere near even 500k preorders before release.”

 

Of note, other estimates indicate that total sales for the game on Steam are less than 500,000. PlayTracker estimates the game has only 163,000 copies. VG Insights has the game at 349,800 copies sold and Gamalytic estimates the game has sold 479,500 copies.

Furthermore, the game only hit a peak concurrent of 89,418 players in its first weekend and has already seen that peak significantly fall off with the game’s first Monday only hitting 65,639 concurrent players. That’s a decline of 26.5%.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard SteamDB peak concurrent player charts

Furthermore, these soft sales estimates and reports of pre-order cancellations appears to align with BioWare and EA’s decision to abandon the game and not provide any DLC or expansions. In fact, it’s been reported they are shifting their entire focus to the next Mass Effect game.

George Yang at Rolling Stone reported on Halloween, “With Dragon Age: The Veilguard now complete, BioWare confirms that there are currently no plans for downloadable expansions.”

He added, “The developers’ full attention has now shifted entirely to the next Mass Effect as their current project.”

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

BioWare and EA have also not provided any sales updates to indicate how well the game has done. This is in contrast to other big releases in October such as Metaphor: ReFantazio and Dragon Ball: SPARKING Zero!.

Atlus reported that ReFantazio sold 1 million copies in its first 24 hours.

Bandai Namco reported that Dragon Ball: SPARKING! Zero sold 3 million copies in its first 24 hours.

 

Instead of making an announcement, BioWare has remained mum. This is similar to Ubisoft’s Star Wars Outlaws release. The company did not share an announcement celebrating how many copies the game sold, but instead reported in financial documents that the game “underperformed sales expectations.”

In Ubisoft’s First-Half 2024-25 Earnings Figures report, it shared, “This quarter saw the release of Star Wars Outlaws™, which underperformed sales expectations.”

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

What do you make of this report regarding pre-order cancellations and total sales for Dragon Age: The Veilguard?