I Fear Dragon Age as a Franchise May Have Just Died

Not to overreact, but I fear that Dragon Age might never again see a new video game installment. Just a few short weeks ago, Electronic Arts confirmed that Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which was released near the end of 2024, fell very short of its sales expectations. EA pinned its soft performance on a lack of live-service elements, which seemed like a bizarre thing to fault it for. Still, in response to this, I felt like on a long enough timeline developer BioWare would work its way back around to Dragon Age after eventually releasing Mass Effect 5. Now, based on new info that has come about, I’m starting to believe that Dragon Age as a whole is instead probably done for.

In case you somehow missed the news today, PlayStation announced that Dragon Age: The Veilguard would be joining its PlayStation Plus service for the month of March 2025. While this is a great value proposition for PS Plus members, it’s yet another disastrous admission from EA that The Veilguard didn’t do anything close to what it wanted in terms of sales. AAA games in the vein of Dragon Age: The Veilguard almost never come to services like PS Plus until multiple years after their launch. For The Veilguard to now be hitting the PlayStation subscription platform barely four months after being sold for $70 shows that EA is trying to do anything it can to milk a few extra bucks out of the game.

What’s even more concerning about this decision from EA is that it tells us Dragon Age: The Veilguard isn’t selling even when it has been discounted. Since its release, The Veilguard has already been dropped to values as low as $25. And while one would think that such a hefty cut in price would lead to higher unit sales, that’s clearly not what’s happening. Otherwise, EA wouldn’t be turning to PlayStation to get a lump sum of money by bringing it to PS Plus in under six months.

By all accounts, Dragon Age: The Veilguard has been so disastrous that I feel those at EA will likely never greenlight another game in the series. Even if we were to get 10 or 15 years down the road and BioWare was still around, I have to imagine that EA wouldn’t be receptive to anything new associated with Dragon Age when looking back at what happened with The Veilguard. And if against all odds a new Dragon Age game did get greenlit, based on EA’s previous comments, it would almost certainly be in the form of some sort of live-service slop. Dragon Age games as we’ve known them up until this point aren’t going to be something that EA looks to pursue any longer.

The only way Dragon Age might continue to see new media from this point onward would be in various books, comics, or other similar products. While this would be some sort of silver lining given how ripe the Dragon Age universe is with storytelling opportunities, it’s still not what longtime fans of the property want to see it become.

Part of me wonders if things could’ve been any different with Dragon Age: The Veilguard if it had simply launched sooner. The 10-year gap between Dragon Age: Inquisition and The Veilguard certainly didn’t do the latter any favors, especially since the two are so closely linked to one another. BioWare choosing to also unveil the game originally in 2018 only to later reboot it, call it Dragon Age: Dreadwolf, and then change its name one more time in the lead-up to release surely didn’t help either. This playbook makes me fear for how Mass Effect 5 will turn out as it was seemingly revealed far too early itself.

I’ve been playing the Dragon Age series since Dragon Age: Origins first burst onto the scene in 2009. I was then there at the launch of Dragon Age 2 and Dragon Age: Inquisition, both of which I greatly enjoyed. When the veil (pun intended) finally started to lift on Dragon Age: The Veilguard this past year, though, something immediately felt off about it. Still, even despite my initial trepidation, I would have never believed you if you had told me at the time that The Veilguard would be given out for “free” only months after its release. The level to which this game has bombed will have far-reaching effects that will surely determine what EA opts to do (or doesn’t do) with the property in the future.

If this is truly the end of Dragon Age, then farewell to one of the best fantasy RPG franchises gaming has ever seen.