Dragon Age: Veilguard development struggled after EA forced, then reversed live-service shift

In brief: Dragon Age: The Veilguard's legacy will likely be as the game that ended the once-beloved franchise. While it wasn't a disaster, Veilguard attracted around half the number of players EA expected, leading to mass layoffs and the company's share price falling. Now, a report has shed some light on what happened: Veilguard became a money-making live-service game during development before pivoting back to a single-player title.

According to a report by Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, Veilguard started out as an epic, single-player RPG, just like the previous Dragon Age titles, in 2015.

But in 2017, EA's leadership saw the popularity of live-service multiplayer games like Destiny and thought "more money" (probably), so the decision was made in 2017 to turn Veilguard into a live service title – BioWare was already working on Anthem at the time.

Anthem, which also had a troubled development, had a ...