In 2019, Electronic Arts has committed to "live service" games. The term generally refers to games built around persistent online elements, such as Destiny 2. In a June interview with GameDaily.biz, CEO Andrew Wilson said, "Games as a service will be the foundation of our industry," and in an October earnings briefing, Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen said EA would "double down on live services."

As a result, fans voiced concerns that EA intended to make "Dragon Age 4" a multiplayer-focused, "Anthem"-style live game. However, according to a new report from Bloomberg, EA has decided to remove all multiplayer components from "Dragon Age 4" and make it single-player only.

This decision was largely driven by two games, according to the report, which cites several "well-informed" sources. One was the single-player action game Star Was Jedi: the other was the Destiny-like live-action game Anthem, which was finally passed over for release yesterday, and which bombed, at least compared to EA's high expectations.

It's not really clear how multiplayer-oriented "Dragon Age 4" was prior to this decision; according to a 2019 report, the game was originally conceived as a deep, reactive single-player RPG, but in 2017, a more profitable "game as a service" model and was rebooted to adopt a "game as a service" model, which some described as "Anthem with dragons. Others suggested that the main story would be single-player, with multiplayer focused on post-release content. [Casey Hudson, BioWare's general manager at the time, said the same thing on Twitter:

Whatever the previous plans, I was relieved to hear that the next Dragon Age will be firmly focused on the single-player RPG experience. Multiplayer games are great, but sometimes you just want to be the hero of your own story. That said, it's still a long way off: last I heard, Electronic Arts expects "Dragon Age 4" (whatever the final name is) to appear no later than April 2022.