Warframe’s audience keeps growing as Digital Extremes looks beyond Destiny 2
Digital Extremes president Sheldon Carter said the studio spent years changing how it develops and promotes Warframe while giving Soulframe room to grow.
Warframe has been gaining players and momentum even as Destiny 2’s development comes to an end. Sheldon Carter, president of Warframe developer Digital Extremes, said the studio has seen “a few years of straight, just massive growth” after changing how it develops and promotes the game.
Carter discussed the contrast in an interview with The Game Business. He said Destiny’s 2014 launch initially pushed Digital Extremes to compete more aggressively, but the relationship between the two studios changed over time. Developers moved between the teams, and some Digital Extremes staff had spent years learning the looter-shooter formula through Destiny.
That connection made the end of Destiny 2 a painful moment inside Digital Extremes. Carter said the studio’s mood was “pretty dour” after the news because of the personal and professional ties between the teams.
Warframe’s current position was not always guaranteed. Around four or five years ago, Digital Extremes worried that its live-service game had reached its peak. That concern helped lead to Soulframe, the studio’s second major project, but it also prompted a new approach to Warframe itself.
Digital Extremes changed its development priorities and promotional strategy. The result, according to Carter, was several consecutive years of growth that left Warframe in a strong enough position to give Soulframe more time during development.
The studio is taking a careful approach with Soulframe rather than rushing it to market. The game was announced four years ago and remains in pre-release, with no Steam release yet. Carter said making a second game on the scale of Warframe taught the team that experience does not prevent mistakes, though it can help the studio recover from them faster.
Digital Extremes is also relying on the trust it has built with Warframe players. Carter said the team wants Soulframe to have enough content, story, and gameplay before it reaches a wider audience. The studio’s ongoing support for Warframe is visible in recent Warframe hotfixes, which continue to add content and address player-facing problems.
Warframe’s reach across different levels of hardware is another part of its long-term appeal. Carter pointed to the game running on a PS5 Pro while also remaining playable on an Android phone released several generations ago. He said that broad hardware range could matter even more if rising costs make newer devices harder for players to buy.
For Digital Extremes, that leaves Warframe as a long-running game that can keep receiving updates while the studio develops Soulframe at its own pace. Destiny 2’s conclusion may close one chapter of the looter-shooter story, but Warframe is still building on its own.
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Warframe
Developed by Digital Extremes
Warframe situates players as members of the Tenno race, newly awoken after years of cryo-sleep into a solar system at war. Reborn into a corrupt era, the Tenno are sought by the oppressive Grineer Empire for annihilation. Warframe armor is the key to overthrowing the Grineer by providing players with unique offensive and defensive powers to explore, upgrade and master during purpose-driven radical raids.
- Genre: Shooter, Role-playing (RPG), Adventure
- Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, Android, PC (Microsoft Windows), iOS, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch
- Modes: Single player, Multiplayer, Co-operative
- Release: 2013-03-25
- Publisher: Digital Extremes
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Age Rating:
- IGDB Rating: 74.8/100
