The Veilguard Improves Its Peak Player Record

Dragon Age: The Veilguard has 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 that Dragon Age: The Veilguard is 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 while early Dragon Age: The Veilguard player 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.

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But seeing how it was a mid-week release, Dragon Age: The Veilguard has now managed to improve upon this figure over its first weekend. According to publicly available data scraped by SteamDB, 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 their concurrent Steam player peaks during 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.

In terms of commercial performance, Gamalytic, VG Insights, and PlayTracker estimate that Dragon Age: The Veilguard sold 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 with Metaphor: 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 has no plans for Dragon Age: The Veilguard DLC, sales of the microtransaction-free base game will be the only thing that can recoup its development costs.

Current Dragon Age: The Veilguard Steam Sales Estimates

As for how high these development costs could be, EA has so far said nothing in an official capacity. Dragon Age: The Veilguard did 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.

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.

Franchise

Dragon Age

Released

October 31, 2024

Publisher(s)

Electronic Arts

Engine

Frostbite

ESRB

M For Mature 17+ // Blood, Nudity, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Violence

OpenCritic Rating

Strong

PC Release Date

October 31, 2024

PS5 Release Date

October 31, 2024

Xbox Series X|S Release Date

October 31, 2024

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