„Follow Larian's lead.” Legendary developers commented on EA head's words about reasons of Dragon Age: The Veilguard's failure
The co-creators of Dragon Age and Mass Effect, among others, commented on the EA CEO's words regarding the reasons for the failure of DA: The Veilguard. These aren't positive statements.
Yesterday we informed you about the statement of Andrew Wilson, the CEO of Electronic Arts, regarding the failure of He pointed out that the situation was due to the absence of live-service elements being implemented. Now, some developers have shared their opinion on this matter.
Developers' reactions to EA's words
David Gaider, who was a BioWare employee from 1999 to 2016, provided an extensive statement on Bluesky. He tried to put himself in the role of EA directors and understand their line of reasoning.
Like, let's say you don't actually know much about games. You're in a big office with a bunch of other execs who also don't know much about games. What are they all saying?
"Live games do big numbers!" "Action games are hot!"
Your natural response? "We should make more action games, and all our games should have live service!"
According to Gaider, even if the developers point out to them that it doesn't work for all games, it doesn't matter. For a company, only profit matters, and if single-player titles don't bring money, then why create them at all. Such logic, in his opinion, is short-sighted and selfish, with which it's hard not to agree. Just look at the competition, which can release great-selling single-player titles, like Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 for instance.
My advice to EA (not that they care): you have an IP that a lot of people love. Deeply. At its height, it sold well enough to make you happy, right? Look at what it did best at the point where it sold the most. Follow Larian's lead and double down on that. The audience is still there. And waiting.
Another former BioWare developer, Mike Laidlaw, who once worked on Dragon Age: Origins, also commented on the matter. In this case, the words spoken were once more derogatory.
Look, I'm not a fancy CEO guy, but if someone said to me "the key to this successful single-player IP's success is to make it purely a multiplayer game. No, not a spin-off: fundamentally change the DNA of what people loved about the core game" to me I'd probably, like, quit that job or something.
Chris Avellone, who once worked on games such as KotOR 2, also gave a brief comment. He stated that Wilson's statement about The Veilguard's failure is typical of the company's logic and he didn't expect anything else from it.
