A weird week for BioWare just got a little weirder, as EA reveals in its new quarterly financial statement that Dragon Age: The Veilguard unperformed sales expectations by 50% for the company’s 2025 fiscal year third quarter.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard game director Corinne Busche, an 18-year veteran of EA, left the company voluntarily last week, not even three months after the release of the long-awaited sequel. Meanwhile, unsubstantiated rumors surfaced claiming EA was planning to shut down BioWare’s Edmonton studio, although industry insiders including Jeff Grubb shut those rumors down. At the same time, Mass Effect 5 project director Michael Gamble appeared to assure fans the RPG is in safe hands.
EA CEO Andrew Wilson touched on both Dragon Age: The Veilguard and FC 25’s sales shortcomings in the financial statement.
“During Q3, we continued to deliver high-quality games and experiences across our portfolio; however, Dragon Age and EA SPORTS FC 25 underperformed our net bookings expectations,” Wilson said, adding that updates to FC 25 yielded “positive player feedback” and saying, “We remain confident in our long-term strategy and expect a return to growth in FY26, as we execute against our pipeline.”
As far as we know, the only big project happening at BioWare after Dragon Age: The Veilguard is Mass Effect 5, but studio veteran Mark Darrah, who left in 2021 after nearly 24 years, recently said he doesn’t think the sequel is at a point yet where it can provide work to that many developers.
At a time when the video game industry is shedding talent all of the time, it’s only natural to read information like this with some concern for the developers at BioWare. EA let go of nearly 700 workers back in February 2024 amid a year that saw “one in 10” game developers lose their jobs to layoffs. All I can say with any certainty is that BioWare is probably really keen on making a big hit out of Mass Effect 5.
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