Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s development has not exactly been smooth sailing, with reportedly such high levels of internal conflict and executive upheaval at BioWare. Reports from within suggest that the poor development of the game has led to general dissatisfaction among the different segments of the studio, even triggering senior-level departures from the experienced developer.
One of the main areas of conflict seems to be the imbalance of resource allocation. By 2023, members of the Mass Effect development team were hired to supplement The Veilguard’s finishing efforts and were given supposedly superior resources than the Dragon Age members. The first batch of Dragon Age developers had more limiting deadlines and fewer creative standards, which created the image that they constantly struggled for assistance and equipment. This disparity created a real sense of tension and disenfranchisement within the team that had been developing the title since its early beginnings.
Contributing to the issues, Dragon Age: The Veilguard has allegedly fallen below Electronic Arts’ initial sales projections. Early in 2025, the game had sold perhaps 1.5 million players, a total representing perhaps half of EA’s early projections. This performance heavily compounds the developmental problems, creating a sense of urgency for an integrated and properly funded production pipeline. The history of The Veilguard is a bleak reminder of the complex conflicts that exist in AAA game development today, where in-house politics and intentional resource allocation can have deep effects upon the trajectory of a project as well as its sellability.
