Earlier this week, EA CEO Andrew Wilson set the internet ablaze with comments suggesting that Dragon Age: The Veilguard would have performed better if it had live service elements.
Plenty of people have fired back against such a notion, but few have done so with the clarity of lead Dragon Age: Origins writer David Gaider.
Posting on social media, Gaider says that while he can "kinda see the thinking" behind Wilson's take — with company bigwigs typically looking at the profit margins of live service titles and concluding that everything should follow suit — there's still more than enough room for beloved properties, like Dragon Age, to do what they do best.
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"There are certainly all sorts of lessons a company could learn from a game like Veilguard (I still haven't played it, so I'm going off what other people have said), but "maybe it should have been live service" being the takeaway seems a bit short-sighted and self-serving," Gaider writes.
He continues: "My advice to EA (not that they care): you have an IP that a lot of people love. Deeply. At its height, it sold well enough to make you happy, right?"
Indeed, it's clear that The Veilguard failed to meet its publisher's expectations. A report from the EA itself claimed that the action RPG had "engaged" 1.5 million players — and so it's strongly assumed that its actual sales figures are fairly low.