EA & BioWare Aren't Making Any DLC For Xbox RPG Dragon Age: The Veilguard

Major AAA studio puts out a complete game at launch??? Without fleecing customers for more cash later?
What a time to be alive!

So is this the end of Dragon Age?

Mass Effect 5 has been in pre-production for a while now so I'm happy that the team will officialy enter the production phase.

Of course not. They expect it to do poorly. They just needed it out the door for a tax break.

And that's honestly no surprise as Dragon Age has maintained being a one hit wonder. How they've release as many bad games after the first was so good, I'll never understand.

@InterceptorAlpha While I am not a fan of the series past origins, I thought that veilguard was selling well…

Fantastic news. I’d like to see more of this, honestly. Put out a finished product in good shape, then end it

No half baked dlc, no tacked on low effort wave survival/roguelite modes to squeeze a few extra bucks out of everyone. This is the best possible news for dedicated achievement hunters—no need to worry about any potentially awful achievements being shoehorned in after you’ve already 100% the game and moved on!

@Ryu_Niiyama Where did you get that? You don't normally cut off DLC from a game that is doing well.

Marketing was completely botched by GameStop's magazine shutting down.

Then you had the articles about the low preorders for the game.

None of which point to anything particularly promising.

@InterceptorAlpha So I say this with the caveat that I am not really following the game but the devs seemed excited and were thanking the fans upon release. Could be PR but I assumed that meant the game hasn’t flopped out of the gate. Since I haven’t finished Inquisition I am waiting n Veilguard to get down to the bargin bin.

No DLC isn’t necessarily bad if they told a complete story. The series and its extended universe has been around for a while so they be done done. Honestly I wish more companies would do that instead of letting the story mutate and get stretched until it doesn’t connect to the original game anymore. (A complaint I have with DA as a whole.)

I haven’t played it so I don’t know.

It’s a disaster. Veilguard should close BioWare for good.

They aren’t making money from it so that makes sense.

@Ryu_Niiyama It apparently EA best "day one" on steam beating Jedi Survivor. Friend reports its "topping" the PS Store charts, so seems to be doing well enough there.

Seem to recall the director before launch saying it wasn't going to have DLC because he felt the Trespasser DLC for 3 "should have been part of the base game"

I have no faith anymore in gamers making out extra dlc is a bad thing for a single player game making out it's a COMPLETE experience which It probably is without the added bonus of dlc to extend the game just crazy to me my own opinion haha 😂

Lol shame, but I suppose we'll have to manage

That's cool. Read an article saying preorders were good. Just need to see if "good" equals what EA/Bioware were expecting.

@Ryu_Niiyama

Thanking fans is general PR. Most developers do. Even those of the ill-fated Concorde. So that's hardly a metric to go by

Witcher 3 told a complete story and still had DLC. The DLC was harolded as better than the base game itself. As was Phantom Liberty, but the bas egame had a washboard of issues, so we'll ignore that one lol. The original Dragon Age did as well. So unfortunately cannot agree on this point.

If a game does well, a developers supports it. They don't abandon it.

And I don't know about you, but if a game is good and I like it, I definitely want more. Not to be told, sorry no DLC. But at least they had the decency to let people down at the beginning unlike Spiderman.

@Lup Could also just be spin and wishful thinking. EA have never been trustworthy.

@InterceptorAlpha @Ryu_Niiyama Your exchange just shows just how much game expectations and habits have changed over the years.

Getting an expansion back in the day felt like a really great bonus that no one expected, but happily enjoyed. No one felt like DLC was predatory or even that a game was purposefully sold as "incomplete" in order to milk DLC.

Now if a game doesn't get DLC, it's perceived as some kind of indication things aren't going well for a game/developer.

It's like people can't even comprehend a developer making a complete experience out of the gate, anymore.

NOTE: I am not saying either of you are wrong. This is purely observational of the exchange between you two and my own commentary on modern gaming.

@InterceptorAlpha
I will rate the game on whether I enjoy it or not. Not whether it has DLC or not.

I am sure they will release bug fixes and patches. To me, that is supporting a game.

DLC is not support, it is additional content.

@GamingFan4Lyf this does not mean to sound facetious so I apologize if so. What generation was this? Only time that really ever applied was pre internet games.

Once we got to early internet days, they definitely were expected.

The amount of begging for them on message boards when the likes of say Diablo or Warcraft dropped was wild.

I was personally part of a huge forum on requests for the rumored Warcraft 3 expansion that eventually turned into 2003's The Frozen Throne.

When Morrowind came out, despite no prior Elder Scrolls having DLC, expansions were one of the most pined for things.

Few things were more exciting when the latest RPG or RTS dropped with their "battle chest" that included all DLC and often a strategy guide. And sometimes other goodies.

Personally I’m happy seeing games release complete. Without dlc. I can play it and move on.

Plus with games taking longer than ever to develop it makes sense to focus elsewhere

@GamingFan4Lyf Wait what? I was really speaking in context to this long running series that according to bioware has a connected narrative and an extended universe. That imo is different that just judging a stand alone game getting DLC or DLC in general. That being said I do miss when DLC was just extra content rather than required to understand the story. Or needing to read a comic or watch a show to keep up with the game story. I got into games because the narrative was originally self contained. That being said I am assuming with all the games and books and comics and movies in the DA franchise that they can close out the series neatly without DLC (at least they should be able to). So I don’t see no DLC in this instance as a bad thing. Sorry if I didn’t make that clear but it was a small part of my post.

@InterceptorAlpha OK, that’s fair. Like I said I am not really following the game and just going off of surface chatter I have heard.

DLC isn’t required for me. Many/most? Of my favorite games have self contained narratives. Sometimes I don’t want a game to overstay its welcome. Due to the nature of the story for dragon Age which is heading for a conclusion, no DLC makes sense to me to close out the story. If the are going to put out DLC matching the game they would likely have to introduce a new conflict/Villain and that would sorta upend the tea table. I never finished Witcher 3 (not my cup of tea) but to my knowledge it wasn’t focused on closing out the world narrative (as the book series is longer) so extra DLC fits just fine. There is more story to tell. DLC should always be made with a roadmap/plan and not just to extend the game for revenue (obviously that is a perk) imo.

@Ryu_Niiyama And that is perfectly fine. There's nothing wrong with you not wanting DLC for a good game just like there's nothing wrong with me for wanting a good game to have DLC. I'd rather buy a game once and buy a dozen DLCs than to buy multiple releases.

That being said, f they don't release DLC it is because they do not feel the cost of producing it is worth what they'd make back.

At the end of the day that is the only thing that fuels such a decision for a game managed by a board.

@Ryu_Niiyama This isn't chatter. The game at launch was topping Black Ops 6 in terms of sales on Steam and it's on top charts elsewhere (no this isn't overall sales in total but it does show its initial success and interest in the game) and it's gotten good reviews from critics. For a AAA release in 2024 from EA it somehow came out optimized for PC with good gameplay performance at launch.

I agree whether a game has planned dlc or not being a metric for success is BS. In the first place DLC isn't planned after seeing how well a game sells. It's planned from its conception and represents developers and publishers intentionally cutting off development and deciding for gamers at what point a game is "complete" and from what point gamers should have to pay to unlock the gate and access content that is only not in the base game for time and money. Part of what's being argued is that Dragon Age Veilguard wasn't envisioned as a success and is just an obligatory release. 1) if that's the case it's rather moot. Regardless of how EA and Bioware projected the game to do, it is clearly and factually doing well. 2) I don't think they'd have released as complete and polished a game as they did for an "obligatory release". It's entirely possible the team just put out the game in the most complete state they envisioned, weren't meddled by EA who have experience a LOT of push back when they micromanaged their games to squeeze money from players (especially Bioware's games), and just wanted to move on to the next mass effect game which fans have also been waiting for a long time. This also doesn't mean they won't try to do dlc in the future. Just that for now they put out the game they wanted to and are now moving on to develop the next game they want to put out. Like it's really not rocket science or 4d chess. Supporting a game doesn't purely refer to gatekeeping content and charging players for horse armor or some extra quest or story beat that completes the narrative and should've been in the base game. Dragon Age will still get updates and fixes as needed.

The fact that this is even an argument and someone can consider a game a failure purely on the basis that it doesn't have planned content locked being a pay wall is insane to me. Like it's truly a sign of how far down the toilet the modern gaming industry keeps going. People can't just take and enjoy a good game (or ignore it if they don't like it because why do we even care? I'd get being a little disappointed if you think the game is good and want more, but if you don't... why is a big deal? Like why do gamers get off on deciding if an experience purely for individual entertainment is a success or failure for the entire world??) Seriously things are BAAAAD when this can even be an argument. To the people constantly complaining why we don't get fully finished and complete experiences at launch anymore without expansion passes or dlc behind pay walls...this is why apparently. Relatively speaking it hasn't even taken that long to become ingrained in the industry. It was only EVERY AAA release seemingly without fail in the Xbox One era (which also really introduced forever games with endless new content and the most constant Microtransactions).

@InterceptorAlpha wait what? How am I treating a business like a person? Did I miss something?

@Ryu_Niiyama I corrected the comment. Going back and rereading, I was attributing someone else's comment to you.

@WildConcept6

The game was only in the #1 top selling spot for one day. After that, it's gone down and Call of Duty has already surpassed it.

Furthermore, sales haven't been announced yet. Andromeda was successful for a brief period but only went onto sell 5 million copies and was considered a flop by EA. Its failure is also what got the Mass Effect franchise temporaraily put on hold.

If Veilguard doesn't sale over 10 million in the first few months, I suspect we'd be hearing the same considering the cost of production plus marketing. This isn't a small indie game.

I also sincerely doubt the legitimacy of player numbers since everywhere else on the internet is negative about the game. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the numbers we're seeing are bots. Even the positive reviews on Steam are largely negative, with the top reviews in "recommended" telling people to wait for a bargain bin sale and criticising the lack of roleplaying, the combat, the terrible writing and the sub par story.

Either way, the game seems to have reached its peak and its doing worse than Dragon's Dogma 2 which was probably the biggest disappointment of this year. Yet that game achieved a peak player count over 200,000. 70,000 for Veilguard isn't that good... considering that's still below games released months/years ago such as Wukong, Baldur's Gate 3 and The Forest from 2018.

I'm also going to bet Veilguard was developed on a higher budget than DD2 and it sure as hell had higher costs towards marketing. For reference, Andromeda was $100 million to make and market.

Honestly, I suspect we're going to hear about Bioware being downsized after this and perhaps the DA franchise being put on hold, if EA doesn't close Bioware outright. If this is indeed a flop as I suspect, that would make it Bioware's third flop in a row...

@InterceptorAlpha
"They just needed it out the door for a tax break."

Not how tax breaks work (unless you're Ubisoft doing a weird deal with the Singapore government, but that's another development hell entirely).

@Vordus
That will vary depending on jurisdiction.

For example, Lamp Lighters League was $22 million that was written off.

In the US, provided they have the documentation to show the amount is reasonable, they can most definitely write it off as an expense on the 1120 form.

@InterceptorAlpha I don't think you know what you're talking about

@WEB_78O If that is the case please provide information to the contrary.

@InterceptorAlpha Yeah, pre-Xbox 360/PS3 generation was when we had the Expansion Packs - but it was more a PC thing. Consoles games were totally "as is".

But it's not as if people expected them - nor where they planned. It was just that developer wanted to add more as a fun bonus.

Then DLC became a thing....

@InterceptorAlpha well, you haven't backed up anything you've said by identifying yourself as a Bioware or EA employee who's job involves knowing the sales data within the first 24 hours... So yeah, I don't think you know what you're talking about.

@WEB_78O Ah, so you have nothing to contribute aside from a lack of business acumen? Alrighty then. Have a nice day.

@themightyant
I didnt know a lot of that data, so many thanks for providing it.

Its nice to see the hate campaign that so many wish to jump on has not scuppered the game completely.
Im advised the game is well worth multiple play throughs anyway, as there are multiple endings, classes play differently and skill trees allow for impactful different builds.
I bought the game yesterday and Im confident I will enjoy playing it (trying to finish Avatar first!)

From memory I dont think DLC was expected or normal back in 1999. We released Dungeon Keeoer 2 back then and it was unusual in that we developed and released some new creature types after main release (I remember animating spiders for this, which had been avoided in the main release as they could only handle up to four legs..)

Its personal taste of course, but I actually prefer games which are complete and finished without further dlc. By the time dlc comes, the game is a pleasent memory and I rarely wish to jump back in, relearn skills and contols etc. Elden Ring is one of my all time fave games, but I still haven't bought the dlc for example.

In this case I think its a big reach to suggest the game is a failure because dlc is not planned. It doesnt suprise me though, as some people seem really invested in trying to portray the game as a failure for some sad reason.

This an interesting article very relevant to this subject: https://www.videogamer.com/features/skyrim-lead-on-the-death-of-video-game-expansions/

@themightyant Ahead of COD? Dude, if I saw that in writing, I still would not believe it. Lol. This game is a crapfest. They will never get back the 150 million (minimum) that they spent on development.

@InterceptorAlpha There you go not knowing what you're talking about again

@InterceptorAlpha But you don't need the project to come out to get tax breaks from losses. They could have said that the project wouldn't recoup the marketing and distribution costs and just cancelled it, which would have been a far more effective tax write-off.

@Vordus You don't need it to come out, no. But when you look at it from outside the vacuum of yes or no to cancel, it is more sensible to release.

With how far the game was in development, it would be less detrimental to release and get something out of it instead of the bad press of canceling a marquee title.

And is one of the reasons you see it happen over and over in today's industry.

@themightyant Yes, that's exactly why. When they start adding in "top surgery scars" in the character customization screen, it's time to turn your back and vote with your wallet. Trash game, trash developer trying too hard to be politically correct.