Summary
Dragon Age: The Veilguardhas surpassed 89,400 concurrent Steam players over the first weekend of November 2024. It hence significantly improved upon its peak player record from launch day, although early market watcher estimates suggest thatDragon Age: The Veilguardis still far from breaking even.
The fourth mainline game in BioWare’s long-running RPG series was released for PC and the current-generation PlayStation and Xbox consoles on Thursday, October 31. And whileearlyDragon Age: The Veilguardplayer reviews were excellent, its initial momentum was fairly modest for a triple-A release, at least as far as Steam is concerned. Specifically, the game peaked at roughly 70,400 concurrent players on Valve’s platform on launch day.
But seeing how it was a mid-week release,Dragon Age: The Veilguardhas now managed to improve upon this figure over its first weekend. According to publicly available data scraped bySteamDB, the RPG hit 89,418 concurrent Steam players on Sunday, November 3, which constitutes a 27% increase compared to its launch day performance on the platform. Since most single-player games hit theirconcurrent Steam player peaksduring the first weekend, it’s likely that this new and improved record is here to stay. The game’s peak concurrent player count on Steam is also likely at least a bit larger than the aforementioned figure because SteamDB can only scrap data from public user profiles on Valve’s storefront.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s Early Steam Sales Are Reportedly on Par With Metaphor: ReFantazio
In terms of commercial performance, Gamalytic, VG Insights, and PlayTracker estimate thatDragon Age: The Veilguardsold between 151,000 and 480,000 Steam copies during its first three and a half days on the market. On average, its Steam sales are currently estimated at 303,500, which puts the game roughly on par withMetaphor: ReFantazio. Taking Steam’s 30% cut into account, this would indicate that the RPG has so far made EA around $13 million on Valve’s PC storefront, where it currently ranks as the fifth Top Seller. Seeing how BioWare hasno plans forDragon Age: The VeilguardDLC, sales of the microtransaction-free base game will be the only thing that can recoup its development costs.
479,500
280,000
151,000
Average
303,500
As for how high these development costs could be, EA has so far said nothing in an official capacity.Dragon Age: The Veilguarddid have to return to the drawing board twice, with the initial work on the game starting all the way back in 2015, although full production didn’t begin until around 2020.
Even so, the game’s development budget was plausibly in the nine-digit territory, simply based on the number of BioWare employees and the average game dev wages in Edmonton and Austin—and that’s without accounting for marketing costs. Therefore, even if the game sold twice as many copies on PlayStation and Xbox as on Steam, it is still likely some distance away from breaking even.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard
WHERE TO PLAY
Enter the world of Thedas, a vibrant land of rugged wilderness, treacherous labyrinths, and glittering cities – steeped in conflict and secret magics. Now, a pair of corrupt ancient gods have broken free from centuries of darkness and are hellbent on destroying the world.Thedas needs someone they can count on. Rise as Rook, Dragon Age’s newest hero. Be who you want to be and play how you want to play as you fight to stop the gods from blighting the world. But you can’t do this alone – the odds are stacked against you. Lead a team of seven companions, each with their own rich story to discover and shape, and together you will become The Veilguard.
