Last week’s news that BioWare had shed a significant portion of its remaining team following Dragon Age: The Veilguard failing to meet EA’s ambitious promises to investors (which is not the same as actually failing) wasn’t really news for us here on MOP. Dragon Age 4 cut multiplayer out all the way back in 2021, so it wasn’t even on the edge of our radar, and BioWare has no live MMORPGs. The core MMOs we care about from EA are now safely rehomed under the Broadsword banner, even Star Wars The Old Republic.
Anyhow, what refreshes the story with relevance for the MMO and multiplayer set is that EA CEO Andrew Wilson addressed the company’s lackluster Q3FY25 financials by seemingly heaping the blame for Dragon Age back on BioWare.
“In order to break out beyond the core audience, games need to directly connect to the evolving demands of players who increasingly seek shared-world features and deeper engagement alongside high-quality narratives in this beloved category,” Wilson said. “Dragon Age had a high-quality launch and was well-reviewed by critics and those who played. However, it did not resonate with a broad enough audience in this highly competitive market.”
In other words, he’s basically complaining that the game didn’t have enough live service and multiplayer components to exploit – a very different stance than Wilson took last fall.
Readers might remember that four years ago when BioWare first removed multiplayer from the game, we could already see signs of a philosophy split at EA. Allow me to quote MOP’s Justin: “This move comes after a back-and-forth struggle between the studio and BioWare’s parent company Electronic Arts. EA has had a mandate that all of its games offer some sort of online component, but BioWare balked at this for Dragon Age 4, and EA relented.”
Of course, the reason BioWare wanted multiplayer gone was that the game had already been in development for six years at that point with a leadership overturn and reboot under its belt, meaning multiplayer was slowing down development even more – plus BioWare didn’t want to just make “Anthem with dragons.” (Given how badly Anthem went, you can kind of understand why.)
Lest you think this is all about Dragon Age, Wilson also took a moment to pick on Apex Legends, which is apparently seeing “tens of millions of people” who play regularly out of its 200M+ playerbase, but that just isn’t enough for the execs because they want to make a lot more money. They’re planning a revamp called Apex Legends 2.0. What could go wrong?
