The decade-long wait for another game in BioWare's epic fantasy series has paid off big time as the newly released Dragon Age: The Veilguard is already breaking records.

After its own rocky development journey, Dragon Age: The Veilguard finally released just yesterday to both solid reviews and a record number of players on Steam. According to SteamDB estimates, the fourth Dragon Age game pulled in more than 70,000 concurrent players who were fighting to protect the Veil all at the same time. The RPG has also topped the platform's 'Top Sellers' chart and even passed Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 on the list.

Publisher EA is probably chuffed since The Veilguard is now its one of its biggest single-player launches on the platform, narrowly passing Star Wars Jedi Survivor's peak concurrent numbers, which were already impressive a year ago, but not quite reaching The Sims 4's 96,000 peak record - and who can blame 'em? It's The Sims.

Developer BioWare can still throw a party and call the game a record-breaker since it did set a new record for the studio itself. The Veilguard overtook Mass Effect: Legendary Edition's 59,000-player peak to become the company's biggest Steam release of all time.

We don't fully know how The Veilguard is stacking up alongside BioWare's biggest hits, however. EA famously stopped releasing games on Steam in 2011, and only began again in 2019, so we don't actually have a concrete idea of how big the crowds were for Mass Effect 3 or Dragon Age: Inquisition on launch day. Either way, after a decade of low points from Anthem and Mass Effect: Andromeda to internal troubles and layoffs, it's good to see the storied studio find success doing what it does best.

I haven't personally played it yet but I'm hearing a lot of mixed reactions. Mostly about inclusion and diversity related things. Anyone play? What are your thoughts?

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[–] icecreamtaco 31 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I remember 2011 when Skyrim came out and the internet buzz was also “wow people do still want single player games”. AAA game companies never learn lol

[–] AlexanderTheGreat 20 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Making games for the shareholders not the player lol.

[–] M600 2 points 3 weeks ago

Yeah, that’s really it. I can’t think of the last time I bought an online game let alone a AAA game. At least not one that wasn’t heavily discounted.

Now that I’m typing this it was resident evil 4 and 8, and I bought them almost exactly 1 year ago.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

TBH 80k players on steam at release is a far cry from Baldurs Gate 3, Cyberpunk, or Black Myth Wukong.

[–] AlexanderTheGreat 9 points 3 weeks ago

I agree. But this is a game coming from a studio that has proved they have fallen. So people might be skeptical about jumping it at full price. I am and I fucking love old BioWare games.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Comparing it to Wukong is unfair. Any game primed for success in China will have astronomical numbers just by virtue of the population size.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

It is fair. All these games were sold globally - they had equal footing.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago

Wukong was made by a Chinese studio and the entire premise is based on an insanely well known Chinese novel. It is not the same.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

Not at all. For one, there can be no sense of national pride in a game made outside your country.

[–] RightHandOfIkaros 16 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Its hard for me to really understand why theyre considering this game such a massive success when you compare it with other contemporary games and the peak player count of DAV is like, less than 1/10th.

Black Myth Wukong had ~2.5 million peak players.

Starfield had 330k peak players.

Monster Hunter Wilds Open Beta had ~460k peak players.

Baldurs Gate 3 had ~875k peak players.

Dragons Dogma had ~225k peak players.

All these are singleplayer games released within about a year or so of each other. So did the older Dragon Age games and Mass Effect games all sell really, really badly to have less than ~75k peak players each? I find that hard to believe. I mean, if we are going to get as granularly specific as "Best release for our specific studio on Steam, out of the like 3 games we released on Steam," then what's the point? They probably could have released a Dragon Age card game on Steam and it would probably have sold more than their previous games.

The real stat is that Veilguard is the easiest EA game to pirate currently, and there are less than 1000 seeds on the top trackers right now, which is typically abysmally bad. If people don't even want to pirate the game whsn it is easy to pirate, I feel like that's not a very good sign.

[–] AlexanderTheGreat 4 points 3 weeks ago

The real stat is that Veilguard is the easiest EA game to pirate currently, and there are less than 1000 seeds on the top trackers right now, which is typically abysmally bad. If people don't even want to pirate the game whsn it is easy to pirate, I feel like that's not a very good sign.

I'm not defending or praising the game here. Haven't played it yet. But I don't know what trackers you're using but that is a little bit disingenuous. It's only been available a day and the private trackers I use they have over 10,000 downloads and at least 2k seeders. That isn't bad for one day. In my opinion.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Calling this game rpg is a stretch imo.

[–] AlexanderTheGreat 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Why is that?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

It's mainly because of the combat. It's overly simplified. Most of the time I've been mashing the left click, almost like playing skyrim. I chose mage for my class and I get three freaking skill slots and you get ridiculously small mana pool.

Every game after Origins has been a downgrade and this is a new low to me.

[–] AlexanderTheGreat 1 points 3 weeks ago

You aren't wrong from the looks of it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

They didn't fuck up the pc release which helps steam sales a lot. Steam version doesn't need ea play or denuvo, even works decently on deck. Fantastic performance on desktop. Game is fine, like da3 but more streamlined, and story is a direct sequel to 3. Looks good, well acted. People bitch about trans stuff but it's optional.

Not the greatest rpg but story is interesting enough a few hours in and combat is satisfying as a pretty simple action experience, kind of mass effecty

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

Ew, I didn't realize it was an EA title. There goes what little interest that I may have had.

[–] FlashMobOfOne 1 points 3 weeks ago

I didn't know it was already out.

Time to go spend $60. Huzzah!