Key Takeaways
- Kingdom Come: Deliverance has seen a resurgence in players after going on sale.
- This prompted lead writer Daniel Vávra to celebrate the new wave of success, posting about the player count.
- However, the post unfavourably compares the player count to that of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, something which many are labelling unprofessional.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance has an 80 percent discount on Steam right now, ahead of the sequel’s launch in February of next year. This has given the 2018 RPG a boost on the Steam charts, with 13,273 players at the time of writing.
In response, the game’s director and lead writer, Daniel Vávra, shared a post about this resurgence. However, in doing so, he compared the current player count to that of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, a game that launched in October. In the post, he writes, “7 years old game vs recent release,” wording which many are calling “unprofessional”.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance And Mafia Writer Comes Under Fire Over Dragon Age: The Veilguard Tweet
“There are a million reasons why you shouldn’t post or even think this way”, replies Twitter user @SperantVancourt. “As a developer who knows what it’s like to be in the trenches and who knows that in this industry anything can happen, you can and should be more mature than this.”
“Your game was on sale for $5, but of course you didn’t include that because it would disprove the nasty point you’re trying to make,” says @vixidescent. “Punching down on your fellow game devs? grow up. grow as a person. i’ll be sure to never play a game of yours [sic].”
“Ugh I’m a big KCD fan but this is very unprofessional and disgusting,” says @emoruiArt.
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Others in the replies have said this has put them off purchasing Kingdom Come: Deliverance and its upcoming sequel, with some adding that they’ve sought refunds on their preorders.
Choosing to single Dragon Age: The Veilguard out is likely rubbing many the wrong way because it was targetted by bad faith actors very recently, predominantly due to its inclusion of LGBTQ+ themes and characters. Much of this began when it was revealed that the character creator would allow the player to give their character top surgery scars. The campaign picked up steam when the game launched and it was spotted that you could make your character overtly trans through an early game dialogue option. Coupled with The Veilguard including the series’ first non-binary character, it made the game a target for bigoted abuse.
Vávra has not shared these sentiments here and has expressed his surprise that the post attracted the attention that it did. He has, however, been largely sympathetic towards GamerGate talking points in the past (as documented in a 2015 article from Kotaku), another reason why some may feel that Dragon Age was used as the comparison.
Indeed, many of those who speak positively of Vávra in the replies appear to share these sentiments, with some bringing out the “go woke, go broke” argument – something which has demonstrably not been an issue for Baldur’s Gate 3, which has an almost entirely queer main cast and an inclusive character creator. Again, Vávra has not been the one to make these arguments, either in the original post or the replies.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 launches in February 2025. Dragon Age: The Veilguard is out now.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance places you deep in the Holy Roman Empire, as a blacksmith’s son hellbent on revenge for a massacre. You soon become embroiled in a plot to overthrow a king.