Veilguard improves its top player record

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Key things

  • Dragon Age: The Veilguard hit 89,418 concurrent players on Steam during the first weekend of November 2024.
  • The game thus improved its current record for the number of players on Steam since its launch by approximately 27%.
  • Dragon Age: The Veilguard's initial sales on Steam are said to be decent, but the game is most likely still far from breaking even.



Dragon Age: The Veilguard surpassed 89,400 concurrent players on Steam during the first weekend of November 2024. This significantly improved its peak player record since launch, although early estimates from market watchers suggest that Dragon Age: The Veilguard still has a long way to go.

The fourth main game in BioWare's long-running RPG series was released for PC and current-generation PlayStation and Xbox consoles on Thursday, October 31. Dragon Age: The Veilguard player reviews were excellent, its initial momentum was rather modest for a triple-A release, at least as far as Steam was concerned. Specifically, the game peaked at around 70,400 concurrent players on Valve's platform on launch day.


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But seeing as it was a mid-week release, Dragon Age: The Veilguard managed to improve this number during the first weekend. According to publicly available data from SteamDB, the RPG hit 89,418 concurrent players on Steam on Sunday, November 3, a 27% increase compared to the platform's launch day performance. With most single-player games reaching their concurrent player peaks on Steam in their first weekend, this new and improved record is likely to stand. The highest number of concurrent players in a game on Steam is also likely to be at least slightly higher than the number above, as SteamDB can only scrap data from public user profiles in Valve's storefront.



In terms of commercial performance, it is estimated by Gamalytic, VG Insights and PlayTracker Dragon Age: The Veilguard it sold between 151,000 and 480,000 copies on Steam in its first three and a half days on the market. On average, its sales on Steam are currently estimated at 303,500, which puts the game around the same level Metaphor: ReFantazio. Taking Steam's 30% cut into account, that would mean the RPG has earned EA around $13 million so far on Valve's PC storefront, where it's currently the fifth best seller. Seeing as BioWare has no plans Dragon Age: The Veilguard DLC, sales of the base game without microtransactions will be the only thing that can recoup its development costs.

Current sales estimates for Dragon Age: The Veilguard Steam


As for how high these development costs might be, EA has yet to officially say anything. Dragon Age: The Veilguard had to go back to the drawing board twice, with initial work on the game not starting until 2015, although full production did not begin until around 2020.

Even so, the game's development budget was plausibly in nine-figure territory, simply based on BioWare's headcount and the average salaries of the game's developers in Edmonton and Austin—without taking marketing costs into account. Therefore, even though the game has sold twice as many copies on PlayStation and Xbox as Steam, it's still probably a long way from breaking even.

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