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Actually, we know a fair bit about the development of the game. It's super expensive because it not only had a nine year development cycle but the game was scrapped and development restarted two or three times now. At one point, it was announced the game was going to be a live service title and the backlash surrounding that made EA/BioWare delay the game and thus scrap a great deal of the existing gamet. It's likely that the visual assets the game has now were part of the live service game which is why the art style looks like its had a Fortnite filter put on it. Larger companies like EA and Ubisoft routinely overspend on games like this. That's part of the problem with AAA game development. Costs are skyrocketing and studios are overspending.
Also, several insiders have supposedly come forward and reported this information. Tons of Youtuber's have covered this stuff. We know it had a 200-300m budget. We know from the credits who was involved in making it and there are videos released by BioWare over the years showing different developers and different art/visual assets than what we have now. The latter confirms that the game was scrapped and redone. The switch from live service to a single-player only experience was also widely reported by media outlets at the time. You can see an example of that here. Also, what information we have will likely be confirmed in the next EA earnings call. So if you don't believe me now, just wait.
Right now, we've been doing the math figuring the game's sales at $60 a copy on various platforms. If we actually factor in Steam's cut or retail costs, it paints a much worse picture in which the game needs to sell quite a bit more to break even.
Regardless, lets go ahead and give EA/BioWare the benefit of the doubt and say the game cost 200 million dollars to make. It's likely well north of that, including marketing but lets say we that's the minimum. It doesn't matter if the game looks like it should cost 200m to make or not. Big companies like EA are often anything but streamlined. I think 200m is a conservative estimate given the long development cycle and the fact that the game has been scrapped at least twice. We know that Steam takes a smaller cut for its digital distribution services than some of its competitors. We know Steam gets 30% of the total revenue. At 59.99, that means only $42 goes back to EA/BioWare. At that price, it would need to sell around 4.7 million copies to break even. If the game cost only 100 million to make. It would still need to sell 2.38 million copies to break even.
That doesn't count the costs associated with physical media or retail distribution. Again, other distribution platforms reportedly take a bigger cut than Steam does. Anyway you look at it Dragon Age the Veilguard needs to sell close to 5 million units just to break even. If its development cost is closer to the 300m mark, things get even worse as it would need to sell around 7 million copies to break even. We also know most of the sales happen in the two to four weeks of the game's release. We are past that and it may not have even broken 2 million copies sold. It's clear by the SteamDB charts that player counts are falling. This shows us that sales aren't picking up and neither is interest in the game.
This game has had a massive drop off in the last 28 days since release. It's likely just as bad on the other platforms. Compare this to Baldur's Gate 3 which is over a year old:
Dragon Age the Veilguard is a failure and it always will be. The only way it will ever break even is if the game was made for 100m or less. Given the 9 year development cycle at a AAA studio and the game having been scrapped twice, that's highly unlikely. The reports stating it was 200m-300m aren't precise, but I think its safe to ballpark its costs somewhere around 250m to 300m mark. Factor in marketing costs around 20-25% of the game's budget and its easy to hit 300m with this turd. No matter how you fuck this pig its a failure.
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