Dragon Age: The Veilguard — 9 years in development, 1.5M sales, a 17% stock drop

Dragon Age: The Veilguard — BioWare's first Dragon Age in a decade — spent nine years in development: work began in 2015 under the codename Joplin, was cancelled in 2017, restarted as Morrison in 2018, and finally shipped October 31, 2024 for EA. Reviews were strong: 82 on Metacritic for PS5.

The commercial result was the problem: EA reported the game reached only 1.5 million players in its first two months against a forecast of around 3 million. On January 22, 2025, EA's stock fell 17% following the holiday earnings report — roughly $6 billion of market value — with EA citing both Veilguard and EA Sports FC 25 shortfalls.

BioWare was restructured on January 29, 2025: long-time Dragon Age developers were laid off, staff not assigned to Mass Effect 5 were loaned out, and the studio shrank around its remaining franchise. EA's CEO called the launch 'high quality' and 'well-reviewed' — then mused that the game might have sold better with live-service features, a sentence that read like the company blaming its own single-player game for being single-player.