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[FunkMiller]

Wow this chick is great, what's her deal

Edit: oh she trans lol, I was gonna say there's no way a chick is this good at games

Don’t be a cunt, lad.

 

[SF Kosmo]

If it peaks lower than that Atlus RPG that just came out, that would be a disaster

Yeah I mean Metaphor was a pretty big success by Atlus standards, but yeah...

This is probably gonna be a Star Wars Outlaws level bomb, not a Concord level bomb, but a bomb nonetheless.

They really did an awful job building up anticipation for this game.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

perfect meme that encapsulates games "journalism".

 

[Facism]

They started by calling us racists/bigots, then once every normie was branded with this, the "insults" lost all meaning and no-one cares what theyre called anymore by these mentally ill people, so now all they are left with is to call us 'chuds' lol, shaking in my boots at being called that or anything else.

So progressive and inclusive, they create slurs for people they don't like lol

 

[Windom Earle]

He wrote a really in depth article back in 2019 about how much of a clusterfuck BioWare was. The guy definitely has some connections.

Which makes me think that when he deleted that post about Veilguard’s sales, it was probably due to some info he got from an inside source.

The Past And Present Of Dragon Age 4

In December 2018, developer BioWare teased the next Dragon Age game, hinting at a mysterious future for the popular fantasy series—one that’s enticing, but seems very far away. Why, more than four years after Dragon Age: Inquisition, is Dragon Age 4 still so early in development? The answer is...

web.archive.org

It’s honestly a fascinating article and worth a read if you’re interested.

Interesting article but it is cut off early, is there a full version somewhere?

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

Interesting article but it is cut off early, is there a full version somewhere?

here’s the original:

The Past And Present Of Dragon Age 4

In December 2018, developer BioWare teased the next Dragon Age game, hinting at a mysterious future for the popular fantasy series—one that’s enticing, but seems very far away. Why, more than four years after Dragon Age: Inquisition, is Dragon Age 4 still so early in development? The answer is...

kotaku.com

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Modern Western AAA in a nutshell and Veilguard is the current epitome of Western AAA it seems

 

[Dirk Benedict]

Been thinking about this and this is totally food for thought.

Since the release of the game, EA and Bioware immediately, like not even a week out, put out two statements:

1. There is no DLC (in a series know for expanded post story Segments, multiple of them) citing all of Bioware is pivoting directly to the next Mass Effect game.
2. It was stated plainly Mass Effect will have the same tone as the others and not whimsy. That game will be more mature writing the series is known for.

That is such a hard pivot right at release which means they were liking the presales/internals. They knew what they had and wanted to pinch this loaf asap while reassuring people about the next ME.

They can pivot all they want.
If they don’t pull their heads out of their asses then the next ME is dead before even being out the gate.
Then again, Modern BW. I am not expecting anything even remotely close to greatness.

 

[Superkewl]

Here's an archived link if you don't want to give Shitaku a click https://archive.ph/T48Kj

 

[coachmcguirk91]

60k+ peak CCU 10 days after release is pretty damn solid. That is good player retention. I would be surprised if the game doesn't eventually turn a profit

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

60k+ peak CCU 10 days after release is pretty damn solid. That is good player retention. I would be surprised if the game doesn't eventually turn a profit

it's good because the initial number was weak.

two things:

1. The game was not a breakout hit, it failed to capture and bring more people.

2. this number could imply the size of the "modern audience"

overall, it's a disaster, as a soft reboot and or as game for OG fans.

profitable(barely) or not. it puts the future of this IP (especially with this direction) in serious doubt.

 

[Hawk The Slayer]

Modern Western AAA in a nutshell and Veilguard is the current epitome of Western AAA it seems

This.

Not only is there nothing positive about them but they are actually making things worse and worse for themselves. As they're causing more and more people to dislike them. But those woke psychopaths don't think like normal humans so they'll just keep pushing their garbage while people continue to dislike them more and more and also laugh at their ideas and flops.

 

[Topher]

60k+ peak CCU 10 days after release is pretty damn solid. That is good player retention. I would be surprised if the game doesn't eventually turn a profit

Nothing solid about those numbers for a massive AAA franchise like Dragon Age.

 

[FunkMiller]

If I'd have responded to that, I would have said that the worst thing about wokeness is that this is the guiding philosophy:

'Judge a person by the colour of their skin / content of their pants, not by the content of their character'.

MLK is turning in his grave.

 

[coachmcguirk91]

it's good because the initial number was weak.

two things:

1. The game was not a breakout hit, it failed to capture and bring more people.

2. this number could imply the size of the "modern audience"

overall, it's a disaster, as a soft reboot and or as game for OG fans.

profitable(barely) or not. it puts the future of this IP (especially with this direction) in serious doubt.

The Dragon Age franchise has been dormant for more than a decade. And from a financial perspective, the game is not a disaster by any means. 60k+ CCU 10 days after launch is very good. The game seems like it will have long legs. You can't deny that

Veilguard may not be the massive hit EA was hoping for, but it is certainly a step in the right direction for Bioware. They have almost certainly been given the green light for the next Mass Effect. They ain't going nowhere

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

Nothing solid about those numbers for a massive AAA franchise like Dragon Age.

It's also still undershooting Metaphor in its second weekend, which... cost about $4,000 to develop. The profitability here is the real question.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

The Dragon Age franchise has been dormant for more than a decade.

and a lot of fans have been wating.

And from a financial perspective, the game is not a disaster by any means. 60k+ CCU 10 days after launch is very good.

it is not good at all.

The game seems like it will have long legs. You can't deny that

the legs of a niche game.

Veilguard may not be the massive hit EA was hoping for

so, you understand how this works, right?.

but it is certainly a step in the right direction for Bioware.

imagine writing with a straight face.

They have almost certainly been given the green light for the next Mass Effect.

oh I see. you are out of the loop.
then next ME has been already geeen lit. .

They ain't going nowhere

im not talking about the studio but this team. spoiler alert : they already move on.

 

[VanCityGamer]

I think you guys are putting too much weight on Steam player counts. I recognize the issue is we don’t have anything else to go on at the moment, but it’s all a mystery until we have sales numbers.

 

[coachmcguirk91]

and a lot of fans have been wating.


it is not good at all.


the legs of a niche game.


so, you understand how this works, right?.


imagine writing with a straight face.



oh I see. you are out of the loop.
then next ME has been already geeen lit. .


im not talking about the studio but this team. spoiler alert : they already move on.

Copium is real. Funny how so many people wanted this game to fall flat on its face. And when it didn't, ya'll still trying convince yourselves otherwise

 

[Topher]

It's also still undershooting Metaphor in its second weekend, which... cost about $4,000 to develop. The profitability here is the real question.

The two shouldn't even be comparable and yet Metaphor performed more consistently through its first 10 days than Veilguard has.

The Dragon Age franchise has been dormant for more than a decade. And from a financial perspective, the game is not a disaster by any means. 60k+ CCU 10 days after launch is very good. The game seems like it will have long legs. You can't deny that

Whether or not the game is a "financial disaster" is going to depend on how well the game sold on consoles. Dragon Age getting fewer players than a brand new JRPG is unheard of. You can say the game will have "long legs" but there is no evidence of that on Steam so pretty easy to deny that at this point. But consoles may be different. No way to know right now.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

Copium is real.

was real for about 1 week... then reality set in

Funny how so many people wanted this game to fall flat on its face.

and the funny thing is that it falied even harder

And when it didn't, ya'll still trying convince yourselves otherwise

you already admitted that it falied.

but it doesn't matter. next bus stop is: "layoffs station".

choo-choo mother fuckers

 

[DaciaJC]

Sophia Narwitz does a truly excellent job laying out all the various reasons why Veilguard fails. 50 minutes but it was worth viewing. First two minutes accompanied by a children's song perfectly shows how immature the characters behave. The content rating suggests it's a game for a mature/adult audience, but in reality it is a bland Marvelized fantasy story where all the grit has been sandpapered away, a game tailor made for teen girls who read nothing but romantacy novels and are obsessed with gender and sexuality.

That was a damned good video, thank you for posting it.

 

[Nasigil]

60k+ peak CCU 10 days after release is pretty damn solid. That is good player retention. I would be surprised if the game doesn't eventually turn a profit

Well, it's still a pretty long game.

The backlash and mockery of this game has been all over the gaming circle and filtered out most of the casual gamers that would normally pick up a AAA fantasy RPG from a big IP and famous developer. That's why the number has been so underwhelming. A moderately successful launch should see 200-400k CCU on steam, instead we got 89k peak.

Those 89k represents the small pinch of gamers that saw all the backlashes online and still think "ehh whatever I will still give it a chance", a good amount of those people will probably actually go on to finish it. Despite all its mediocrity, one cannot deny this game is pretty long and well made from a technical point, and someone with a full time job or in school will likely need more than one or two weeks to finish it.

So yeah, the player retention rate might looks okay on the second week, for the small amount of people that's playing it. I suppose this is the true size of the so called "modern audience". But it will have a stark drop off in next couple weeks and you can expect rumors of bad financial numbers some time next few months. If the sales number can be interpreted in any positive way, we would've already heard about it by now.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

here’s the original:

The Past And Present Of Dragon Age 4

In December 2018, developer BioWare teased the next Dragon Age game, hinting at a mysterious future for the popular fantasy series—one that’s enticing, but seems very far away. Why, more than four years after Dragon Age: Inquisition, is Dragon Age 4 still so early in development? The answer is...

kotaku.com

Skimming that old article, Bioware has zero focus and keeps flip flopping employees back and forth between various games under development, which they all seem to be in crisis mode each time.

 

[Hawk The Slayer]

Well, it's still a pretty long game.

The backlash and mockery of this game has been all over the gaming circle and filtered out most of the casual gamers that would normally pick up a AAA fantasy RPG from a big IP and famous developer. That's why the number has been so underwhelming. A moderately successful launch should see 200-400k CCU on steam, instead we got 89k peak.

Those 89k represents the small pinch of gamers that saw all the backlashes online and still think "ehh whatever I will still give it a chance", a good amount of those people will probably actually go on to finish it. Despite all its mediocrity, one cannot deny this game is pretty long and well made from a technical point, and someone with a full time job or in school will likely need more than one or two weeks to finish it.

So yeah, the player retention rate might looks okay on the second week, for the small amount of people that's playing it. I suppose this is the true size of the so called "modern audience". But it will have a stark drop off in next couple weeks and you can expect rumors of bad financial numbers some time next few months. If the sales number can be interpreted in any positive way, we would've already heard about it by now.

Yeah 200k to 400k would be a average success for it, more on the higher half in this case since the expectation should be higher than Dragon Dogma 2's 230k at the very least. Lots of people are into a big budget western fantasy game, probably the most appealing genre for many gamers outside of GTA and the more casual Call of Duty. This should have been the present day Witcher 3 and Skyrim but even higher in 2024 and probably would have reached around that amount too had they made the game more interesting and not include disgusting nasty shits in it. This game could have been that breakout potential the devs were hoping for just like what Witcher 3 and Skyrim did for their franchises by selling many times more than their pervious titles as awesome big western fantasy games. Now it's being trashed on social media everywhere and while there's a bunch of ragebait videos that I tend to avoid. They are at least warning folks of the shit in this trash game and even the worse of them are just easily the lesser of the two evils.

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

Skimming that old article, Bioware has zero focus and keeps flip flopping employees back and forth between various games under development, which they all seem to be in crisis mode each time.

And I just realized, while that article is also pretty crazy, this is the one I was thinking of (published near the same time):

How BioWare's Anthem Went Wrong

It wasn’t even supposed to be called Anthem. Just days before the annual E3 convention in June of 2017, when the storied studio BioWare would reveal its newest game, the plan had been to go with a different title: Beyond. They’d even printed out Beyond T-shirts for the staff.

kotaku.com

This was the article that made me realize BioWare was in far worse shape than I’d ever imagined

 

[StreetsofBeige]

And I just realized, while that article is also pretty crazy, this is the one I was thinking of (published near the same time):

How BioWare's Anthem Went Wrong

It wasn’t even supposed to be called Anthem. Just days before the annual E3 convention in June of 2017, when the storied studio BioWare would reveal its newest game, the plan had been to go with a different title: Beyond. They’d even printed out Beyond T-shirts for the staff.

kotaku.com

This was the article that made me realize BioWare was in far worse shape than I’d ever imagined

Here's another Bioware beauty. Last game they made which seemed well reviewed and sold a lot was DA Inquisition. 10 years ago. It was so long ago, Xbox One and PS4 just launched at the same time. And the COD game at the time was Advanced Warfare.

They also had a game called Shadow Realm which was cancelled in 2017. So during that time which would had been right in the heart of ME:A, SR, Anthem, and DA:V, it looks like that studio was a giant clusterfuck of too much stuff going on at once. Not surprisingly, it's been a shitshow. Adding to the fire is their games now have a heavy political slant to it where it's really in your face.

The Story Behind Mass Effect: Andromeda's Troubled Five-Year Development

In 2012, as work on Mass Effect 3 came to a close, a small group of top BioWare employees huddled to talk about the next entry in their epic sci-fi franchise. Their goal, they decided, was to make a game about exploration—one that would dig into the untapped potential of the first three games...

kotaku.com

 

[Madflavor]

Jason Schreier deleting that twitter post his probably the most damning sign that the game didn't sell well.

 

[Hari Seldon]

This is just sad really. I could really go for a peak BioWare game. Those games were awesome. But this west coast culture has stopped producing creativity. They are self-censoring too hard for any creativity, leaving nothing but bland corporate slop.

 

[Topher]

Jason Schreier deleting that twitter post his probably the most damning sign that the game didn't sell well.

Also think it is telling that this is all Mat Piscatella has said about Veilguard since launch.

Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social)

Veilguard is an absolutely gorgeous video game. Stunning. What a treat it has been so far. So happy to be back in this world again.

bsky.app

He could be holding back info for now, I suppose.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

I dont think this game sold great. Compared to the avg video game, surely it sold way better than random game X, but within DA and EA's expectations, I dont think it will report great numbers. I dont even think it'll even match expectations. But who knows. Nobody knows what the targeted sales are unless EA comes out and says if it exceeded, hit or missed targets. And it's probably too early to make that claim already. But if Veilguard blew away sales, someone by now would had chimed in "It sold 3M copies on launch week!"

 

[BadBurger]

Another entirely predictable thread because a game has black or lgbtq people in it

snore

 

[MMaRsu]

The game seems like it will have long legs. You can't deny that

 

[MMaRsu]

Copium is real. Funny how so many people wanted this game to fall flat on its face. And when it didn't, ya'll still trying convince yourselves otherwise

But it did fall flat on its face?

Other smaller games have had much bigger CCU's. There hasn't been an uptick in user numbers at all.

It also fell off the Best selling charts rather fast.

The copium seems to be strong with you though.

 

[Gilgalaad]

Well, we don’t have any numbers or successfull story tweet yet?

EA is waiting for the BF discount.
Then they could say its a millions seller.

I think this game will probably have a 50% discount during the BF.

 

[GymWolf]

Yes, it is how they want to be portrayed, because there were plenty of them on the staff in this game including the lead.

Extremists are not the norm.

 

[Humdinger]

I think you guys are putting too much weight on Steam player counts. I recognize the issue is we don’t have anything else to go on at the moment, but it’s all a mystery until we have sales numbers.

I agree that hard sales numbers across all platforms will tell the final story, but it's not really "all a mystery" until we get those. We are getting multiple indicators, all pointing in the same direction.

In addition to the Steam numbers, we also have 1) top-seller charts on console, showing it dropping off quickly; 2) multiple reports about high levels of trade-ins and refunds, 3) Jason Schrier's deleted tweet, and 4) silence from EA about sales at a time when they would want to brag about them if they had cause to.

So we have multiple indicators that the game's sales are rather anemic (relative to what would be expected for a game of this size).

 

[Gamer_By_Proxy]

This game sounds like the HR meetings I ignore at work by playing an actual video game.

 

[Hookshot]

For the first time since release it dipped below 20k players at 19,822.

 

[laynelane]

The problem is thinking that the DEI affects just some lines of dialogues or some few characters....this already hve been discussed here.. but DEI affects everything from inception through development.. that stupid lines/characters are just a way to shove it in your face.. but all that you described are consequences of incompetent hiring, leadership and fucked up priorities.. and in all of those the forced and badly implemented DEI practices have a huge effect.

This modern western devs just cant be creative anymore or deliver good products.. the ambient for this simply dosent exist ... it must be a constant walking in egg shells, safe spaces and toxic positivy... the echochambers and safe bubbles that block different ideas and creativity with toxic positivity are the result of what the industy has become.

Go check resetera and the threads post trump election .. those looneys are creating games ... dominating key positions on western studios.. theres no fucking way that kind of people can make anything remotely good.

I was thinking that too. Besides the points you mentioned (hiring practices, etc. ) - safe, sterilized writing is a hallmark of DEI too. Wouldn't want to offend anyone, after all. Considering what DA is, its roots, it's terrible that you can't role play as anything other than a good person.

 

[Peroroncino]

Did jason schmuck even comment on why he deleted the tweet?

 

[Hookshot]

If I'm reading it right then it's 10k down on this time yesterday and that would mean a 3rd of yesterdays player base weren't bothering today, which seems a bit of a steep drop?

 

[VanCityGamer]

If I'm reading it right then it's 10k down on this time yesterday and that would mean a 3rd of yesterdays player base weren't bothering today, which seems a bit of a steep drop?

Yesterday was a holiday, today isn’t.

 

[Hookshot]

Yesterday was a holiday, today isn’t.

Your right, in a few countries. Not here though

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

Did jason schmuck even comment on why he deleted the tweet?

i heard he is writing a book about it

 

[VanCityGamer]

Your right, in a few countries. Not here though

Yeah in the biggest market.

 

[Humdinger]

I heard Gamestop is only offering "up to $22" for a trade-in. That's low for a game this new, which released at $70 so recently. Normally they'd give you $35 or so. This corroborates the two earlier reports that a high number of people are trading the game in.

 

[GymWolf]

Did jason schmuck even comment on why he deleted the tweet?

He twitted that he felt like a huge cunt for deleting the tweet but his wife's boyfriend made him delete that one aswell.

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

BG3 currently has more than twice the player count of Veilguard. I think gamers needed a real CRPG to get the taste of Veilguard out of their mouths.

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

^ and lol you can see BG3 had a temporary dip the day Veilguard launched, then bounced back higher than it was before.