EA's CEO, Andrew Wilson, recently voiced some bizarre criticism of Dragon Age: The Veilguard during a quarterly financial call.
He suggested that the game struggled because it didn't have any live service components. EA did announce that The Veilguard underperformed, even if expectations were perhaps set a little too high, but blaming this on the game not being a Fortnite ripoff misses the point entirely.
I'm not sure any amount of live service elements could've saved this game from the poor writing, pacing, and lackluster companions.
It seems that a few former Dragon Age developers agree with this sentiment that live service is not the right move. «Look, I'm not a fancy CEO guy,» former Dragon Age creative director Mike Laidlaw says (via Eurogamer). «But if someone said to me, 'the key to this successful single-player IP's success is to make it purely a multiplayer game.
No, not a spin-off: fundamentally change the DNA of what people loved about the core game.' I'd probably, like, quit that job or something.» I do want to point out that I don't think it's fair to say that the plan was to make The Veilguard into a purely multiplayer game; instead, it would be a singleplayer game with live service features.