EA Stock Price Plummets After Dragon Age: The Veilguard, FC 25 Disappointments

Good. EA is where gaming companies go to die. Never forget Westwood!

Dragon Age was really good.

Split Fiction will be amazing no matter what the stonks are at.

I will put it like this. they lost almost a whole Bethesda worth of value. 8-9% of a ABK.

Modern day stock markets make no sense.

@Realist Yeah.... :/ DA Origins was so good

@Realist it's ok if you loved the game - but I'd be curious as to why. I bought DA:V and kinda just gave up about 20-25 hours in - and I would say it was mid at best. Not offensively bad (except for some of the writing), but it's not a game I'm looking to revisit and finish off any time soon. It was definitely a case of not being able to work out what it was, or who it was for.

The fact that 1.5 million players in Dragon Age Veilguard is considered disappointing is kinda hilarious, 'cause dats a lotta people, but it also shows how expensive video game development has gotten. All of this without even mentioning how controversial the latest Dragon Age game is (you can already see conflicting opinions in this very comment section), and while I don't think anyone is really wrong for how they feel about the game, it's absolutely one hell of a problem to have a game with such a mixed reception.

With the amount of games series that EA have simply killed off and the internal studios that they close down, I can’t say I’m too fussed to read of their woes. I haven’t bought a new EA game since Dead Space Remake, and I would have happily bought more from that series. Really miss Command and Conquer aswell (the ones from the Xbox 360 days).

When everyone zigs, it’s time to zag 😎😎😎

Me: “Babe, you can’t buy groceries for two months. I just invested in EA stocks. Don’t worry though: we’ll live off of gummy worms until it skyrockets like GameStop did.”

Imaginary wife: “I thought we were investing in Capcom.”

Me: “Nah, only an idiot would do that.”

Imaginary wife: “Yeah, well I just invested in a divorce lawyer who’s big into Capcom stocks.”

Me: “You’re going to regret it!!! EA to the moon, baby!!!”

Imaginary Wife: “……… Goodbye, CWill97.”

So yeah, zag-a-lag and buy EA stocks. Nothing could go wrong 😎😎😎

It's a shame for Veilguard. It's a really fun game. I am on my second playthrough and got a third lined up. Love the game.

Just wish they patched in the blood splatter option, new game +, and more save slots.

@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare Didnt say I loved it. Was really good. Gameplay was fun. Moved along quickly. Looked real nice and wasnt buggy. I finished it in like 16 hours or so.

I've said it before but I think that the health of the video game market is being artificially inflated by the big games. They are the ones pulling these record trillion dollar profits.
But everywhere else? We are witnessing an unsustainable market that is correcting itself after years of propping itself up.

@Realist how could you have finisihed that game in 16 hours? I mean, even if you dropped the difficulty down to story-mode, and only did golden-path, I don't think you could (or would want to) finish it that quickly. HLTB had it pegged at 26-30 hours for the main story missions only.

And yes - it was pretty well solid (bug-wise), and it looked super polished. It also looked like someone with ADHD on a cocaine bender was responsible for the particle effects... I mean everyone is different, so you can like the games you like. I just find it curious why some people "liked" the game so much. I thought the first 10-15 hours was ok (and I thought the hate over-rated)... but it just kept getting more removed from the RPG game that I wanted to play with every hour... but that's just me.

Thanks for answering my question.

@species and Bullfrog, two of the most prominent PC publishers in the 90s

@Mikey856 the Taash storyline was overly talked about... it was bad, and I mean young Disney writing bad. It made her sound less mature than my 12 yo daughter... and yet she was the fearsome dragon hunter.

My biggest problem was the fact that despite the end of the world setting, the sorts of (mostly companion) missions were vanilla at best, or just bizarrely inconsistent with the story-line. A lot of open world games struggle with this - but DA:V isn't an open world game. It's very much an on-rails adventure. So the missions play more or less how they are intended.

Still - your views aren't wrong... I've loved lots of games that others thought were poor. Hell, I even didn't mind Forspoken... and perhaps it was that I played DA:V so soon after Forspoken that I realized the similarities were more a flaw than a boon.

That money doesn't belong to EA, so they don't really care. If they're lucky enough, this will discourage rabbit investors trying to turn a quick profit at the expense of videogame quality. EA will be better off with smaller investors who might actually give a hoot about long term image of the company and videogame quality. But this sounds like pure fiction...

I love football but see no need to get the yearly releases. It inevitably comes to PS Plus or goes on a deep sale for £10 or less

Veilguard was poor compared to the previous entries so no shock it didn't perform well.

Veilguard was a poorly written game, the writing sounds like it came from a group of 14 year old teenagers. The Taash quest was obnoxious and annoying. Technically, the game ran well and had enjoyable combat, didn't encounter any bugs. Now Corrine Busche has left the company only 3 months after the game was released? Hmmm.

Sounds like they pulled a barve better do some press ups ea

@Netret0120 FiFA.... sorry FC, just feels like DLC for the previous release and has been like for years, still blows my mind how much people spend on packs!

I guess not enough people showed up to support Veilguard. A story we hear over and over.

I'm a huge fan since DA1 and DA4 (Title - Dreadwolf imo) was a amazing ending. Better than I had ever hoped for, even if not perfect.

@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare Yeah its just kind of mid honestly.

I dunno why people are super surprised, DA:2 is mid as well. Inquistion is probably only a little better than this i remember it really benefited from a empty launch window.

Last Mass Effect game was bad. I feel bad, but I dunno, I'm not sure why people were so surprised the game wasnt incredible.

As for the audience, its MCU folks right? I think thats fine, and I think those folks did enjoy it. But I think a lot of corporations think that the marvel style media is still mainstream. A lot of people are burnt out on it. Its not 2012 anymore.

People focus on Veilguard too much in this instance... the loss of footie MTX money is what is really driving this, DAV is just a footnote in comparison and probably an easy target because people do like to make mountains out of molehills.

Looking at the longer term trend Ubisoft's problems are much greater: it's stock has fallen by 82% in the last 5 years, where EA's is largely where it was. Ubisoft has a high debt-to-equity ratio. It's not uncommon to see a sharp sell-off in stocks that report a bad quarter/ issue a profits warning based on the underperformance of specific properties forecast to do better. But EA is still seen to have a strong brand portfolio, hence its /E ratio of 30. Longer term problems arise if the power of those brands, or its market position changes.

Veilguard has been one of the more enjoyable & polished experiences on the PS5 (says more about the PS5's release line-up from my perspective) but it pales in comparison to Dragon Age: Origins on the good old PS3 or Inquisition on the PS4. Just doesn't feel as epic.

@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare
I will try to give you a more complete answer as someone who has the platinum and around 200 hours (I always play games slow).

Firstly, just from the point of immersion in a longer game, either a character I like, or a decent character creator (preferably voiced like this game) will always significantly bump up my liking of a game.

The storyline is good imo, and I really enjoyed it. The scripting was good most of the time, but did have its issues at times. VA was generally good to very good when compared to a lot of games.
The companion side stories were good, once you got into them properly, with most only really getting going later in the game (and having lulls) - however I much, much preferred this to the norm in a lot of other games of side content boiling down to low-story fetch quests / hunt quests etc.
The various area/faction quests also end up being a series of short storylines made up of a few quests each - a bit like how GOWR did it, with you often returning a while later to see the next part of the story.

Heres the thing though - I hear this game criticised for its story / scripting all the time, though this is usually (but not always) a veiled (pun intended) way of pushing a certain hateful narrative, but how good are game storylines and scripts normally!?
Some are amazing, but its rare. Ive said this a few times now, but im playing DW Origins atm, and enjoying it, but the script is really dire - doesnt mean I automatically dislike the game - a lot of 'classic' games arent exactly award winning scripts!
I would say the game had a YA tone, and there was a LOT of just talking quests. It was also notable how few times you had background (yours) faction specific answers to pick / how little your background was mentioned except when you were with your background faction.

The combat / character building was excellent and got better as I went through the game - now this might be linked to class - I went the mage spellblade route (Antivan Crow) and had a blast raining lightning and fire down then using magic infused melee to do damage.
Some of the bosses / optional bosses were really good, and I also liked enemy designs in general (though we could have done with a few more, this is not a criticism that is uncommon).

Finally but certainly not least: Graphics were good, performance was very good (I will say I played mostly on Pro), game was very polished with almost nothing in the way of bugs.

Weird sub-headline and comment at the end of the article. When a publicly traded company's share price falls, that money isn't "gone". The shareholders who sold got money for selling their shares.

The 1.5 million figure for veilguard isn't the number of slaes though, it's the number of player engagements. If it was sales they would have said so explicitly. Basically they've counted anyone who started the game via any means. It doesn't take into account refunds etc. I'm betting the actual number of copies in the hands of players that actually paid for it are well south of that number.
Besides Anthem was a glorious success compared to this; 2 million copies sold in its first week. This is now 3 big fails for Bioware and it all rests on ME5 being a product that doesn't crap all over its heritage.

I still say that as of today, there are too many people making too many games for too little an audience. The cost and time of these games further hurting chances, there needs to be some reductions in the space to balance. Theres the few games thst grestly inflate the overall spaces health like the fortnites, now rivals that are raking it in while on the flipside u have the concords, hellblades and such that go out and die

And yet Dead Space Remake sold 2 millions copies and that was classed as a disappointment as well yet it's more than DA:VG which cost more to make

Yet EA sit on some of the best IPs ever that have been left to rot

SSX
Mercenaries
Command & Conquer
Dead Space 2

As I said yesterday:

I’m sure EA will be fine though.

Announce bad news.
Stock drops.
Company and bigwigs buy up cheap stock.
Company announces massive firings.
Stock price goes up.
Company and bigwigs profit.

It’s almost like money isn’t real and the whole system is a scam.🤑

@species
I certainly won't forget Westwood, nor forgive EA, but I'm not sure I can celebrate this.

I don't like this news because I'm sure Microsoft is licking their lips right now and I doubt the highly incompetent administration (term used very loosely) in the USA will do anything to stop Microsoft if they make moves.

@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare Story was terrible. I actually started skipping it a 1/4 through.

@Rich33 thanks for an actually genuine comment - it's nearly 1am here (in Australia) so I'm not going to respond half-arsedly. However, I do very much appreciate your perspective. In gaming - it doesn't matter how much you hate, or love a game - chances are there's someone with a completely different take. And that's also cool.... as long as people try to discuss fairly and honestly - and don't just follow the current dog-pile.

@themightyant I think you're right... DA:V was a poster-child (for the wrong reaons), but it was never going to do FC25 money. The downside of Live Service is that once you hiccup, people get nervous to be around you.... and they can get very vulnerable to any form of speculation. Once the faith goes, the money follows. Conversely - as long as you keep feeding the beast with what it expects, everyone is happy and you can literally print money. FC25 definitely had the struggle to transition away from a "licensed" franchise, but I don't know why it struggled beyond that.

DA:V was divisive because it got caught up in the culture war crap. It wasn't a horrible game like people suggested... but (and this is entirely subjective) whoever thought that DA should feel like a high-school sleep over with your besties was seriously wrong. They tried to make it a ME style game, but the world/story didn't support that. Or the world has moved on from ME companion-style storylines. I will contend the biggest problem was, it never knew what game it wanted to be. Yet- clearly for many people - it was the game they wanted.

@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare That's fair enough, but I've spoken to many people who, like me, really enjoyed it. I thought the world was crafted well and looked good, the missions were pretty varied and engaging and the combat was fun, with several build potentials for replay if you like that stuff.
112 hours to complete for me and maybe 20 minutes of what some might object to as 'woke' - and I was surprised at how sensitively that story arc was handled . The culture war cr@p that people use to divide and spew hate was unfairly targeted at this game imo.
I believe it sold 1.5 million copies in 3 months, which may not be to expectations, but is hardly 'nothing'.

Like I said, its horses for courses, but that game was not universally seen as a failure, and the spread of scores it achieved with reviewers suggests that too.
Have a great day

PS (it also ran for my 112 hours without ever glitching or having any bugs - a rarity these days!)

PPS - just seen you've addressed much of this in later comments

Good. This only really impacts people outside the industry looking to profit from it and having no real interest in the actual product.

This isn't really about DA or Fifa(FC) underperforming. It's about expectations of constantly bigger audiences being far too great and a need to recognise the reality that the industry is close to hitting the ceiling in terms of pure audience numbers. Even games like FC, one of the biggest titles in gaming cannot show perpetual growth, there's always a cap. The financial vultures have just found that out in a very expensive manner.

@Titntin cheers - and I want to respond a bit more tomorrow. I suspect this game (as a first cut) was designed on a hit-or-miss strategy... there are just somethings that either just work, or don't. I wanted very much to enjoy the game - I could see a lot of positives with it. In the end, when it started becoming a smaller game (revisiting the same areas) for quests related to characters that should be able to sort out their own stuff... anyway... I'll try to put my thoughts down better tomorrow (not just try to put my thoughts down now... seriously need to hit the hay).

Here's an opportunity for Sony to buy EA

@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare
No problem. I have often said this is my 2nd best game last year - I have no problem explaining that (at least to someone who is genuinely asking).

You are right, it did get used as an 'anti-woke' poster child from certain nasty individuals and attention seeking streamers - the trouble is, I dont think the people behind the hate are really into games, and I dont think the devs were intending to push an agenda - imo games with character creators really never are.

I will add to another comment you wrote, that I never played DA1 or 2 (for whatever reason they didnt appeal to me at the time), played DAI and found it decent but not great (combat I think was the main reason but it was a while ago), but loved DAV so the whole 'its not a DA game' goes way over my head!

@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare Sleep well mate.
Every time you visit a new area it opens out and you are questing somewhere new, so that never bothered me and I found the whole game less repetitive than many other such games as a result. Questing individually with some friends was a great way to develop the relationship and make you care more about them I thought, and I actually really enjoyed this aspect, even if , as you say, they could have done this without you.
Anyhow, everyone's different, I just dont think this is a poster child for bad design or ineffective quest design - quite the opposite for me.

@Onimusha Of course its not - Sony would not have deep enough pockets for that!
That their share price will regularly fluctuate is hardly new, I had shares in EA when I worked for them 25 years ago and there were huge swings in value back then. I sold all my shares to pay for my marriage. 4 weeks later and I would have gotten twice as a much - this is par for the course.

@Onimusha very silly thing to say...

@The_Wailing_Doom No fireworks from my side either, just indifference. Anyway Kane lives brother!

@Vivisapprentice Maxim too

It does not surprise me when 10ish years between titles results in poor sales. These companies create a good thing and then abandon it for a decade and wonder why people lose interest. Not everything needs to be quasi-retired to build mythic levels of fan hype. Not everything can pull that off, but it seems companies seem to think all their IP can do/deserve it.

I played DAI ages ago. On a different system. On a different ecosystem. It was my first (and only) DA game. It was alright.

I couldn't tell you what happened in that game to save my life (besides a lot of boring meandering). Nothing about Veilguard continuing that story mattered to me. I was never going to be able to piece together the events of the story I experienced and carry it forward, so at that point, why would I bother? I "started part way through" once already. I'm not open to doing so again.

Sometimes supporting these overarching narratives can backfire because they only cater to the most hardcore of fans who have been waiting breathlessly for a decade or more to find out what happened. Most people truly do not care. There's a time and a place for narrative throughlines, but they need to be approachable and available within a timely manner, otherwise casual fans will simply forget/stop caring.

Bad game doesn't meet sales expectations, bad company loses money. The world makes sense, even if just this small moment.

I'm sure College Football sales numbers prevented things from being any worse.

Re EAFC, I've switched to the fantastic Football Life 25 on PC until EA gets a decent competitor on console. (Come on 2K!).

Simply put, no company should be worth that much, it is unsustainable.

I don't think dragon age is a big hit, it performed in the ballpark of inquisition in the same time frame (despite high expectations from EA) but FIFA/FC is their biggest earner. It's huge. That is why the stocks reflected that.

Hang on a second, I was reliably informed at the time that Dragon Age was "dunking on all the chuds," by selling like hot cakes. Now I don't know what to believe.

I hope they do something more substantial to fix EAFC after realising that people will stop spending money on it if the game continues to become more and more a gambling machine than a football game.

Time to buy the dip!

@johncalmc
I was eagerly awaiting Veilguard since the day I finished Inquisition. It did take way too long to come out but I still would have bought it...if it felt like the proper follow up to Inquisition. When I took a look at the trailers and previews though, I knew it wasn't the Dragon Age that it used to be.

EA's FC 2025 felt like a reskin with updated rosters. Oh sure, Rush was an addon, but they need to start thinking about major improvements. At least update the announcers. It's been the same for the last 4 years.

I'm convinced Fifa players have no clue that FC 25 is basically Fifa now.

Those dastardly evil gamers just don't understand what we were trying to make! 😡

@Rich33

After that much time the enemy variety never bothered you?

@StopBeingTribal

Honestly wish they could have AFC Richmond in every iteration. Playing Ted Lasso's team in '23 is just too good.

@symmetrian
A little bit, but enemy variety is hardly a criticism unique to DAV, neither was DAV a particularly bad example of this - and the enemies were well done here.
At least the game devs didnt reskin enemies hoping you would consider them different like a lot of games, and instead thought a bit about how to mix up encounters.

@symmetrian OMG. You and me are in complete 100% agreement. 😃