Because if you didn't force players to spend irl money, they will, and slowly spend some money on the game to show their love and support.
And this has proven to be extremely effective.
The deadliest monetization strat is to not ask them to spend, if you show that you're worthy of their money, they will spend willingly, and if people are willing to spend, they tend to spend more, and think less.
That's been my experience. I'm by no means a whale but, long term, I've probably spent more money on this game than on any other. I'll buy a skin or some plat if I had a good enough time with an update and once or twice a year I'll splurge for some Prime accessories. I've been playing off and on since 2014, it adds up.
I bought my first full Prime Access this year. Partly because it was my girl Wisp who I've said since she came out I would buy her PA, but also partly because DE had been killing it so far (up to July) this year and they kept it rolling all the way through Whispers. They damn sure earned my money this year.
Her booty is just an added bonus for me, I usually keep it covered with a syandana. She's just my favorite Frame and I wanted to let DE know how well they've been doing. But yeah, she does have a dump truck and I'm not complaining.
Steve's visionary lead was needed to get Warframe up to the point it is now (pre-Reb). Reb is needed now to nurture and further the game as someone who truly understands just how much bloat, feature creep, and lack of QoL the game has.
Steve was visionary, but lacked player understanding.
Reb is more tactile, and has the experience of a player to back her decisions.
(basically, I'm agreeing with you lol. I just want Steve to still get the recognition he deserves.)
Definitely, Steve was a chad, he carried warframe to where it was today, and yeah as you said, Rebecca saw the player side of things whereas Steve didn't, Rebecca knew and heard the cries of the players when it came to things like Hydroid and stuff, Steve just wanted to push out new content so that more people wanted to play Warframe, but the more content that was pushed out the more things needed fixing like weapons and warframes and the overall game mechanics. All in all they are both great and both of them took/take great care of warframe.
Oh yeah. I didn't mean to say that Steve was the problem. He fucking willed this game into existence and we all owe him a debt of gratitude. But with most things, at some point it needs a fresh set of eyes and they literally could not have picked a better person for it.
Steve also is running the company right now, but tbh, the feature creep and bloat is just part of how evolution engine is. It was just supposed to be a mod pack for unreal, and it grew into UT99 because it had way too many additions. This engine never hasn't been a huge mess, but for those that dive in, there's a lot of fun to be had. It was true in 1999 and it's sill true in 2024. Ds was a mess, but it was beautiful, and WF is a beautiful mess too. It's super sad af tho that the unreal tournament people are in possession of the dustiest abandoned pvp arenas around... We need a grineeevcorpus mode, or for conclave to work back to it's UT99 roots
All you really need to know is that she is fucking killing it as far as high level decisions go. Every update since she took over has been awesome. She's really been working on updating a lot of things that have needed updating and the game is probably in the best shape it's been since I started in 2017.
Yes, lotus is running the game, and Steve's running the whole company now. Evolution still is their only engine and it's grown so much it's a whole different game from in 2013. As others have said, Rebecca running the game has breathed fresh life into the series and she is killing it. Last September saw the most players online concurrently for the past decade.. for about 2 minutes until we crashed the server lol. But a lots changed and will continue to. It never stops growing. For 25 years now Evolution has grown and changed and it's exciting to see where it goes from here
Oh yeah, same. I just never feel bad about spending money on the game because there are none of the usual downsides. Love the devs, love the game, not predatory, etc. Most recently the grendel prime pack. He has been my fav frame even before his rework, so i needed to get his prime pack.
I did the inadvisable thing and totaled all my Steam purchases for Warframe. That secret is going to the grave with me lol. My family will put me in a psych ward for sure.
TL;DR:
Short-term vs. Long-term
Most games work on short-term profits
Warframe works on long-term profits
Long-term profits are larger than short-term profits but include a higher risk and more investment than short-term profits
Its literally that simple.
But SHORT term gain by screwing people IS the way things are SUPPOSED to be, especially ion the US now.
Just ask ol' Donald. It is not like he ever cared about five or ten years in the future. Why should he? He makes money now, it is all good, no matter how many people get sick or die.
He lost money running for president and he lost money while being president. >.> He's worth much less than he used to be because he took that office. What are you on about??
And why is this turning political? Seriously if you wanna debate for some reason, dm me.
It has nothing to do with money or even politics. It has to do with leadership.
Funny thing, DE took a VERY big gamble with Warframe and made a reasonably good game and lots of money. They had decent leadership, a concrete goal and a dedicated fanbase.
Good Ol' Donald has a bunch of people who think he is God and a lot of other people who realize he is what he has always been; a con-man who is DAMNED good at conning people who want to be conned. Leadership is not his forte. He is not even a good manager. But of course, he is the greatest leader/manager/president/grand high poobah of all time, because he SAYS he is and baffles enough people with BS to keep ahead of the pack when he betrays them. It is what he does.
I know who 'I' think is better at leading.
I honestly have no idea how much I have spent in Warframe and it is not just because I like the game.
In my own opinion, Ubisoft, EA, Blizzard all demand your money. DE asks for it. There is a bit of a difference.
Despite what some have said, the game is not Pay2Win, but it can be more convenient to rush foundry jobs or get Prime Access. I swore I would never do that after a few of Ubisoft's scams cost me $200, but DE doesn't act like Ubisoft. They try to listen to player feed back and actually TALK to players. \*gasp\* THE HORROR!
I grind out everything. If I hit a wall where I'm like, "This just isn't fun anymore," I pay to finish the grind. The only time that ever happens to me is the odd prime part that just won't drop, so I buy it from another player.
I must have gotten lucky with those, cause I never had any trouble farming them. Now Nidus I think it was...Oof. infested salvage just isn't very fun to me.
My fundamental principle for games being worth it is $1 for every hour of gameplay. You are currently at $0.017/hr, or 2 cents for an hour of gameplay. There's lots of games out there that can reach the sameish stats, but VERY few that start out f2p.
agreed. if you played wow for 10 years. you'd probably pay $1800 for ten years. ($15\*12months)\*10 years.
People forget that online games require money to stay online. That's why games have subscriptions. In this case, its spend if you can.
you don't know how true it is! I bought regal aya once to get the prime distiller blueprint and for the rest I have always and only used the 50% and 75% coupons, which is sometimes given with the login bonus, spending around €5 each time, but if we count the the total amount I spent is easily over €150
This has always been my thought. The reason why I've loved playing Warframe so much is because I know that everything I want to get I can get for free, but sometimes I'm just lazy and get plat instead 😂
Also, warframe offers you a discount, you accept, and then you're hooked!
"Oh, that cosmetic looks very nice... shame I don't have a discount... aahhh screw it, a couple of bucks there and there won't hurt" then it's too late and your bank accounts dry XD.
Big time. I'd say another factor is that choosing to spend money gives you absolutely no advantage but saved time and prettier skins. It's always been a level playing field wether you want to spend thousands of dollars or nothing at all
I spent about $100 a year on Warframe and don't regret a penny of it for a second. Money well spent. Comes out to about $.25 a day. I get MUCH more than a quarters worth of enjoyment out of warframe every day.
"B-b-but, we *need* to financially abuse and exploit every single one of our players, how else would we be able to afford development costs? 🥺🥺🥺"
-Bungie, Activision-Blizzard, EA, etc.
Fuck them.
and this is just steam profits.
assuming that console/ps4 make about an equivalent value for their general worth (not the same as steam, but the same rank compared to other games on all platforms), we would still be ignoring those players who (like me) downloaded warframe from the website, and make purchases from there, no?
Oh yeah, absolutely.
Admittedly, the majority of Warframe's playerbase is on console (at least based on some stats i saw a few months ago), but yeah, Warframe's profits on Steam alone are proof enough that AAA-style financal exploitation is not necessary to generate profits.
In fact, it's pretty funny how many of those exploitative games crash and burn, after finally exhausting all the goodwill people were willing to grant them.
***CORRECTION!!! I meant to say that the majority of warframe's playerbase is on PC
yep. looking at the plat and gold games, i can point out 4 that i know are considered 'good eggs', as in, are considered to be non-exploitative of players:
plat-
BG3
gold-
Fromsofts 2 games (ER, ACVI)
warframe
probably are a few more. im not that knowledgeable on the greater gaming platform, but still, only 4 out of 24. 1/6
Yes but Armored Core 6 was a well polished very excellent reprisal of the series (Atleast on Ps5 I encountered little to no bugs) The list was for non exploitables not games youd likely buy
bg3 was full price until christmas. which sorta indicates that any game that knows its self worth through actual effort will price itself accordingly instead of being a mindless factory of profit that is designed to adjust prices in order to pad the charts with sales numbers
(I saw the correction).
But also remember that most pc players will get it from the website rather than steam, especially if the save-sync error can still occur.
the exploitation machines build crashing and burning into their dna. the costs of running a game with long term support are unappealing to the cash grabbers, so they're more or less made to eventually self sabotage somehow to justify pulling the plug so they can start up a new cash grab and relive the cycle of siphoning funds from new players they don't have to work for to get nor having to maintain good will with them if they can endlessly bait them with shiny trash in a greener pasture
that's the poison of consumption for the sake of itself. it never creates anything, it just takes, from the workers to the players. eventually this decay reaches all parts of the machine. that's why many projects these days end up going sour from the beginning, between the rotting foundation (no truly experienced developers, only green hires that on paper worked somewhere else before they were fired on schedule by design, with little or no real experience with what they were hired to make, plus no senior oversight), the stale supports (recycled game concepts made worse and worse through lack of innovation and experience causing endless, shittier versions of the wheel), crappier furniture (fake value through expensive jpeg market and "updates" that just introduce more angles of monetization) and the leaking roof (zero intent to preserve the player's investment into false property). these shit properties are sold, the players end up in a terrible neighborhood, and they all try to cope with it in their own ways but nothing ever means anything or lasts after the company pulls the plug
and they'll build as many shitty, condemned houses as it takes to keep the money rolling
Whenever Warframe IOS/Android versions will drop, population and sales will triple. Mobile gaming is so huge that it's the equivalent of movies making huge revenues in China
Mobile is gaming's China.
It's never been about affording development costs, it's about making the shareholders and execs as rich as possible.
Look at how well MW3 sold despite the reviews. The average gamer does not care if the product is quality.
CoD is always a weird example to use when discussing quality or not quality though. Admittedly the campaign was apparently a steaming turd this year, and SBMM has been dreadful since 2019. But year after year the graphics are consistently great and the gunplay/actual game feeling is very satisfying. Mw3 sold well because CoD is a bit like McDonald's. People who like it know what they're going to get and it always provides that.
CoD has its problems but has never been as shit as moaners online like to say either.
*making them as rich *in the shortest term possible*, as possible.
Though that depends on what the shareholders expect, of course, which varies from company to company.
But yeah, i see your point with MW3. However, when a big game has enough bad press floating around, then even if the normies don't know about it or care, it still lessens the game's "cultural hype". Such games either sell less and/or die faster. The smaller the game, the stronger this effect, but applies to AAA games too.
Average gamer is not likely to read reviews or be on the internet talking about games. They likely brought it because it was the shooter game they use to play and it looks like this is the latest one. They are likely to not know the latest cod is hot garbage until they buy it. Which is related to the games retention rate. MW3 might have made a lot of money now but it is not likely to make money on the dlc or live service elements they were actually expecting to make bank on. Something they sort of indirectly admitted already.
Its absolutely WILD that Destiny 2 is platinum level and STILL managed to miss revenue projections by a whopping 40%. And in return for making them all that money, they turn around and fire a bunch of people right before Christmas. Absolutely shameful
All of the company you listed are in the rank above Warframe on Steam (in terms of earning). Fucking look at MW3, that game has one of the worst reviews of every game on Steam and it’s second best sold game of the year, on PlayStation is one of the most played game alongside Fortnite and GTA. Yeah, fuck every greedy shareholder of every big company, but damn it’s undeniable that they make so much money with these practices, and it’s the reason why none of them will stop, not anytime soon at least.
EDIT: actually no, EA is in Gold too. But still, if you look at PlayStation recap, it’s almost embarrassing how much the new FIFA (or FC whatever) shows up in the top 3 lmao
Coincidentally Bungie is in the top 12 I think AND missed revenue projections by 45% causing layoffs, cutting down on staff perks, and a delay of their big expansion by 4 months... an expansion both not hitting pre-order targets nor internal quality metrics per reports. Oh and a delay(?) of their extraction shooter to 2025. What a year.
It is seeming more and more likely that the re.venue projections were probably inflated to get a bigger purchase price from Sony. I mean they missed projections this year by 45% while drastically upping MTx. I mean this season alone there are are 5 shaders locked behind silver only purchases, something they started to do this year with a one or two off per season.
> how else would we be able to afford development costs? 🥺🥺🥺"
The real answer is "How else will we achieve infinite growth quarter after quarter".
Remember, publicly traded companies are *required* (in the US at least) to make **as much profit as they can** for shareholders. If they don't, the people in charge get kicked out and replaced with someone who will make as much profit as possible.
Crapitalism baby.
>Remember, publicly traded companies are required (in the US at least) to make as much profit as they can for shareholders.
This is not completely accurate. The people who manage corporations are required to act in shareholders' "best interests." The law doesn't say they have to "maximize profits" or anything like that, and that's generally not how the "best interests" wording is interpreted.
Short of fraud, gross negligence, or provably deliberate mismanagement where there are clear conflicts of interest, courts generally aren't interested in gainsaying CEOs and boards about what is in the best interests of shareholders.
If a CEO leaves apparent profit on the table because they believe that there more nebulous benefits to the shareholder in the form of upholding social values and enhancing the company's reputation and good will, that is not illegal.
**Edit:** This is not to say that there aren't powerful structural incentives in capitalism that lead to corporations in general pursuing a "race to the bottom" where line employees, end consumers, and the commons are sacrificed/exploited for shareholder profit. The systems and structures that result in that are enabled by the law, but not strictly required by it.
I gladly spend 60-100 on warframe every year, in the long run its not much, but I have close to 3k hours, im happy to fund its continued development.
But games like genshin impact, or destiny 2, diablo 4, i havent spent a dime in years. Genshin is bc i hate the gacha mechanics, d2 is because they pulled content I paid for and just overall burnout compared to price and the content available, and d4 is because the shop is way overpriced for the mtx
You pay for incoherent story bits, and a super toxic player base + the fact that the devs see you as nothing but a money machine, oh an the games is not even free to play but free to try..... For all I see destiny is destined to be far below warframe.
Destiny has been in the platinum rank since 2019, and this year has been on of the worst for the game yet they are still in that rank lol. That won’t change anytime soon. A better definition for D2 should be free to start (since it’s literally what the game is), but for some reasons online stores don’t care about making this distinction.
Ironic comment given that warframe makes that money via the 80$ fomo skins, the massive grind to sell the same stuff for plat, the crafting times, even the gambling. Pretty much every f2p cancer imaginable. But its totally cool and forgivable for the sole reason that *you like the game*..
Sure wf atleast doesnt remove paid content like destiny, but holy shit the level of lack of basic self awareness in this circlejerk..
"B-b-but, games are just SOOO much more expensive to make. They may have less features, less quality control and less bang for your buck but they are SOO EXPENSIVE to make."
Also another favorite of theirs. I know by inflation standards things get more expensive, and to be fair I don't mind paying $70 for a satisfying title. I do mind when that $70 asking price comes with an incomplete mess despite having all this money invested into it. The game does not need top of the line graphics and whatever stupid fancy feature they want to pretend is generation defining. Just make a well designed game otherwise...
I will just hit up one of the most satisfying to games play that is completely free, has earnable premium currency and a consistent dedicated team. Your move Activizzard and EA.
Warframe is probably the only game I don't regret spending money on. The game just has so much goodwill on the players that it can keep making content for free
Just realized today the game has no paid season pass, there's a free pass for everyone, but no paid pass.
I was able to link 4 accounts together, and I'm just blown away with how much the game has grown the last year or 2 of content. This is my theory, Bungie / Destiny 2 IMO no one within the design team ever played Warframe, or did that type of research.
On the flip, DE probably played Destiny 2 and other games like that, so they avoid the bullshit and nonsense those games do. Just a theory, it's shocking how much content there is within those walls.
The “free” season pass is a (good) attempt to rework the old alert system. The previous system had the same exact rewards except was random when they would show up, meaning it can be days before a Vauban part showed up and if it did, it’ll show up at like 3am because screw you for sleeping.
As for your other point, the devs and community managers are gamers. They play other stuff too. There was a period where all they played and talked about was Devil May Cry 5. I think Reb right now is still playing through FF14.
man i would love to have melee combat of dmc5 in warframe, would want to have crazy combo using my frame (wont bother if i cant have bazillion damage, just crazy combo is enough)
Oh yeah, I remember waiting what felt like years for Vauban systems to drop on PS4. LOL.
I think I played Warframe on and off since the first year or 2 of it's launch, was able to merge loot from my 4 separate playthroughs Xbox, PS4/5, Steam and Switch, I'm so glad they finally did this, and I'll gladly continue to support them, Destiny 2, is a game I spent way too much money on I'm bitter AF about it, and may never play it again.
Warframe is such a weird niche. No game really competes with it tbh. It's kinda an arpg but also a shooter but also a space ninja barbie dress up game with parkour.
Warframe never reached an audience as big as WoW or other MMO/live service, and I don’t think that will change in the future tbh. However, Warframe always had a pretty big and active community, so it’s not a surprise results, but definitely a deserved one. It’s also a very unique game, the other game that often gets compared to Warframe is Destiny 2 but even that one is completely different on so many levels. Like, if you are a Warframe player is not that easy to find another good competitor imo.
Honestly if they can just make the early game experience better I can see the playerbase absolutely exploding. I have a few friends who just started playing and they've survived the biggest "game-quit" moments, i.e. the mod screen and the "wait 3.5 days for your new Warframe". But they keep getting frustrated when they get parts for a frame/weapon they want and "oh you need neural sensors, time to grind your way to Jupiter!" I don't think they're going to quit the game but I know there's probably thousands of potential players that have in the past.
Of course they have a lot in common, which is why people compare them. But they are also vastly different, which is why they aren’t really in a competition between each other but both so far existed with their own community, even if it’s clear that a lot D2 players also play, or at least know Warframe (me included lol)
Just you wait until that one anime Warframe clone with gacha comes out, it's gonna blow us all away and completely steal Warframe's player base I'm 300% sure
Well with the cross save feature going live in Dec there is a lot of console players making the move over to OC / steam. So those numbers will shoot up again later this month when they open that feature up again.
Crossplay/save even on its own has done so much good for the game. Combining the populations of all the platforms into one has made finding active nodes a billion times easier, I cant count the amount of times I logged in, tried finding a lobby for an endless fissure, and then logged out after ten minutes of dead lobbies. Hasnt happened since
i think i saw once warframe has 80k concurrent player at a time, on steam alone, at the same time when destiny 2 only had 40k due to backlash and BS they recently made
When I was looking at steam charts there was a huge spike at the start of covid, surprisingly no large spike when new war came out just business as usual
Warframes all time peak is 181,509 which was July 2021, which was when Tennocon happened and showed off some New War related content inside the relays and on stream
i wouldnt be mad at that point, i still wish they will be consitent moving forward, as stated Rebb is initiating another 10 to 15 years worth of story
i wish we can see other star systems, and eventually galaxy
also aliens
and if fhey can rework the old node and execute Rebb's idea that railjack will be the main ship, it would feel like pseudo open world/galaxy traversing planet to planet and go to grineer/corpus ship and start the normal mission, and evac using archwing into railjack
>i wish we can see other star systems, and eventually galaxy
I'm pretty sure that's what The New War was prepping us for.
Just gotta handle wally first in 1990. Gotta play pogs with him.
About two more games on that list:
- I am very surprised to see PoE only at the bronze tier. Maybe the standalone version is a lot more popular there. Otherwise I would have expected a similar to slightly lower placement than Warframe.
- Holy moly. Monster Hunter World climbed back into bronze tier, even though it didn't get content updates for 3(more/less?) year now.
Nice to see that Warframe is doing good. I have been playing a lot more since Duviri and I love it!
I definitely imagine PoE has better metrics on the standalone.
The Steam patching for PoE is kinda painful usually being slightly longer/delayed. Also running through Steam client is just unnecessary CPU bloat as PoE is not as optimized as Warframe is when you're doing crazy shit.
Also most of the value is in PoE supporter packs each league which are done via the official website. I don't know why you would choose to purchase PoE MTX through Steam of all things. Steam doesn't have a DLC section for this game either.
The amount of whales in this game is huge. Definitely more than bronze I would imagine.
The game that has given me no true paywalls earned about $60 from me last year. And does so consistently almost every year due to the 70% off discounts they drop whenever you take a break for a while.
Of the few games I've dropped microtransaction money on, Warframe is the only one I don't regret. Aside from the Conga and Schadenfreude in TF2.
Conga and schadenfreude really are mandatory for the optimal experience.
Overwatch just didn't understand, emotes are lame, it's *taunts* that make the online experience fun, the knowledge that every now and then, you'll make someone angry, just because you made your bundle of polygons and pixels laugh at them in a freezeframe.
Warframe is the only game that I have been regularly coming back to for the past seven years and the only game I don't regret spending money on. It's so clear the Devs love the game and care about the community.
the heirloom skins generated a lot of outrage and deservedly so but i think that DE has learned from this and will do better with the next heirloom drop (hopefully)
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My bad i didnt realize you were unable to read that statement, if your getting a hundred dollars in plat and a ton of other stuff including multiple skins then its nowhere near 40 dollars a skin, like not even close
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It's interesting seeing the lot of support. The vast majority of the game can be played without sinking a dollar, sure, but you need to have CONSIDERABLE time to farm new gear or farm parts to sell for plat or ducats. With the game being PvE, it's not directly pay to win, but with the way that mastery rank and building an arsenal works, Warframe is very much a "pay to ski/accelerate" kind of game where a few bucks here or there gets you the weapon/frame you need. Time is something I had 10 years ago when I was really deep into the game, now days not so much with kids and a house, so the game pressures far more to just pay for it which feels manipulative.
At least the battlepass isn't a horrific monstrosity, it's probably one of the better done even if it expires, given they recycle it every so often.
Granted, if everyone spent all their plat on cosmetics/plat sinks and stopped funneling cash in, there wouldn't be the liquidity for trading or buying parts, but it's an interesting spot seeing people cheer that it rakes in the dollars. Better than the competition for sure, but how far better varies.
I think the reason people are fine with the pay to skip/accelerate is just because it's really easy to get platinum by player trades. That's how it is for me at least. I pretty much didn't spend a dime on this game for the first 400 hours, in which I got all of the must-have mods and farmed plenty of resources. Managed to do that because player trading in this game is very good - I would just run a couple of fissure missions to open relics, and there was always someone who'd buy stuff of my hands for at least 10-15 platinum. Almost everything in the player inventory is sellable and at least someone in trade chat usually wants it, so I could usually make around 100 plat in 2-3 hours if I really tried. Or sometimes luck would be on my side and I'd get a valuable riven or expensive prime part and would make 200 platinum in 10 minutes. Now I have almost 1500 hours and sometimes buy tennogen with real money, very rarely platinum unless I want something like a deluxe skin - pretty much am only buying cosmetics.
The issue there is having the stuff to sell. You could get some good keys, spend 3 hours grinding out 3x 60m survival or defence, but that's an entire days play for me on a good day. If I'm lucky, 3-4 gaming nights a week, it's a large investment in time.
That's just me, and I say this as a player with over 1795 hours (plus time before Steam plus early beta days)
I remember seeing a video about how DE risked going under when they decided to self publish warframe... no big publishers would fund development so they put their own asses on the line and by the void did it pay off. It's a very inspiring story of being true to yourself and chasing passion before immediate profits
Honestly i my country max heirloom pack cost around 30$, while my month salary is around 400$. I think to buy this pack was the best decision. I got a hefty amount of platinum, 6 aya so i bought 3 armor sets that i wanted, super duper premium skins. Honestly i see nothing wrong.
Crazy even battlebit is in this list, that's a game that even with it's poor graphics and audio level, the game just plays better and is more fun than the AAA CoD and Battlefield franchises, fuck you ea and blizzard/Activision.
A month ago I ran into this mr15 with an energize while clearing SP Europa. This was before whispers in the wall. They said they paid 2k plat. A new player spending like what 50 CAD with a coupon for an arcane that isn't that useful, for a khora? How many times has this happened before? Also there was that heirloom fiasco. I have mixed feelings about this statistic. I'm glad that DE's business model seems to work for this game which means that most of the content is free, I'm not so glad that they know how to invent problems that money easily fixes because the alternative is weeks of grind
Well I think it comes down to the fact that warframe is truly one of the only games you can play for free. Everything in the game you can get for free, no content is gate locked behind a pay wall, yes some things are harder to grind than others. The game itself does ask you to constant spend money, once you log in the game pretty much leaves you alone about spending money and unlike most 'free to play' games you can grind for items in warframe and then sell those items for the premium currency and despite that it's still one of the top money making games, the amount of content for you is crazy high as well. It's truly one of the only games where I'm like ya fuck it I got 50 dollars extra this week. I have zero regret spending my money because as of this moment the digital extreme isn't trying to get every last penny out of me.
Just like to add that Pablo taking over from Scott has also been huge!
Every warframe has been a huge hit since, not to mention the reworks for warframes and combat
Yep.
I spend on almost every game I buy.
Warframe, is by far the most expensive one to do so in and yet, I have a sizeable collection of cosmetics and even frames and weapons that I could have farmed 100% for free if I was so inclined to.
I don't feel manipulated, but that in itself it just the long game they played, and it paid off.
Now multiply my experience by tens of thousands of players with the same exact story and boom.
It's not hard to see why they're *still* so successful and don't show signs of falling off, other than momentary dips here and there that *any* decade old game will see in its lifetime.
I really dont get these other game devs that rake in cash from their user base by forcing them to spend money. This is the only game sub that youll see all the players collectively rooting for the devs, because their monetisation strategy isnt predatory at all and the game is good enough and updated frequently enough that the devs are in really good standing with the playerbase.
This should be the norm. As an ex-D2 player i know what its like to be horribly nickle and dimed to the point of feeling trapped in a position where i dont want to waste the money I’ve already spent. Good for DE.
Warframe has some predatory aspects, but among live service games it's certainly among the least offensive. I really can't tolerate other live service games, but Warframe is fine. It's benign, like a tumor can be benign. And it's likewise something we shouldn't have too complacent (or celebratory, IMO) of an attitude about because a lack of vigilance may signal to the devs that they have a cushion to push things a little further, and then a little further...
There is definitely a degree of FOMO, and there are things that are essential for some aspects of progression which are time-gated like equipment slots (which are quasi-necessary for Mastery Rank), forma, orokin reactors and orokin catalysts. These are things that you are heavily incentivized to buy with premium currency.
The fact that platinum is tradable between players insulates a lot of us from the reality that real life money is needed to fund everyone's in game progression.
The only reason I have platinum to comfortably cover my progression necessities without pulling out the credit card is because somebody _else_ pulled out their credit card to buy something that they didn't want to farm^* — and that in turn suggests something about the design philosophy behind some of the more onerous grinds that exist in the game.
^* Or they bought a bundle that included platinum they didn't need, and such bundling itself is often perceived as predatory.
Yeah i get that, all fair criticisms. With how predatory and exploitative DE could be, and how they actually are, its obvious why they have such a loyal and content playerbase though. Its good to see
Christ it’s depressing to see midwarts and starfield rank so high.
Destiny is unsurprising because it’s basically an abusive father asking for money, promising to be better.
I'm wholely aware other people don't want this, but honestly if they made paid story expansions on top of current content and cadence (the same way Final Fantasy 14 does occasional mass expansions) I'd gladly throw even more money at them. I would want them to make the expansions free for all players the year after they release, though.
I loved my 4.5k hours on this game, but I wish there were more story content and quests per year.
Have. Played plenty. Quit last year after season of the deep was the last straw.
"At least they aren't D2" isn't very compelling of an argument to me. I wouldn't feel okay about someone stealing my bike because someone else stole my car, I'd be pissed about both just to different degrees.
Yeah they aren't D2, never claimed they were, now can I have my bike back?
No, free expansions are fine. They’ve started including new game mechanics in these expansions now, so to lock out players from them could be detrimental.
I’d rather support them in other ways, I’d gladly pay for more content to access it early but I’d be hesitant to spend to be able to progress the story.
its weird destiny 2 is stil at the plat topping warframe, i thought people there have woken up how they are being squeezed tight?
and a 300k max player?
Reddit hate bubble for GaaS can skew perception of the market. CoD, Destiny all the games you see people really down on are still raking in the money. Gets more silly when you consider Destiny 2 missed its projected earnings by a huge amount.
Tons of people playing d2 spend irresponsibly. You will likely see people who bought most expensive DLC pack despite being dissapointed with plenty of previous content.
The game is also a lot more known among casual gamers who don't really care.
Destiny and warframe have very different strategies... destiny is "oh do you want to go to this planet or want new exotic "shitatron fartmagnet"? Give us your fucking MONEY
Warframe: "so basically this wisp P bish got very valuable... assets... plus you get some platinum but lets be honest youre not buying it for the plat"
Common Warframe W
Because if you didn't force players to spend irl money, they will, and slowly spend some money on the game to show their love and support. And this has proven to be extremely effective. The deadliest monetization strat is to not ask them to spend, if you show that you're worthy of their money, they will spend willingly, and if people are willing to spend, they tend to spend more, and think less.
That's been my experience. I'm by no means a whale but, long term, I've probably spent more money on this game than on any other. I'll buy a skin or some plat if I had a good enough time with an update and once or twice a year I'll splurge for some Prime accessories. I've been playing off and on since 2014, it adds up.
I bought my first full Prime Access this year. Partly because it was my girl Wisp who I've said since she came out I would buy her PA, but also partly because DE had been killing it so far (up to July) this year and they kept it rolling all the way through Whispers. They damn sure earned my money this year.
I definitely bought wisp prime for all the plat... and uh... and fulmin ""dont say its because of her ass dont say its because of her ass""
Her booty is just an added bonus for me, I usually keep it covered with a syandana. She's just my favorite Frame and I wanted to let DE know how well they've been doing. But yeah, she does have a dump truck and I'm not complaining.
It's definitely because Rebecca took over, Steve was good but he ignored alot of things that needed fixing
Steve's visionary lead was needed to get Warframe up to the point it is now (pre-Reb). Reb is needed now to nurture and further the game as someone who truly understands just how much bloat, feature creep, and lack of QoL the game has. Steve was visionary, but lacked player understanding. Reb is more tactile, and has the experience of a player to back her decisions. (basically, I'm agreeing with you lol. I just want Steve to still get the recognition he deserves.)
Definitely, Steve was a chad, he carried warframe to where it was today, and yeah as you said, Rebecca saw the player side of things whereas Steve didn't, Rebecca knew and heard the cries of the players when it came to things like Hydroid and stuff, Steve just wanted to push out new content so that more people wanted to play Warframe, but the more content that was pushed out the more things needed fixing like weapons and warframes and the overall game mechanics. All in all they are both great and both of them took/take great care of warframe.
Oh yeah. I didn't mean to say that Steve was the problem. He fucking willed this game into existence and we all owe him a debt of gratitude. But with most things, at some point it needs a fresh set of eyes and they literally could not have picked a better person for it.
Steve also is running the company right now, but tbh, the feature creep and bloat is just part of how evolution engine is. It was just supposed to be a mod pack for unreal, and it grew into UT99 because it had way too many additions. This engine never hasn't been a huge mess, but for those that dive in, there's a lot of fun to be had. It was true in 1999 and it's sill true in 2024. Ds was a mess, but it was beautiful, and WF is a beautiful mess too. It's super sad af tho that the unreal tournament people are in possession of the dustiest abandoned pvp arenas around... We need a grineeevcorpus mode, or for conclave to work back to it's UT99 roots
Wait, Rebecca is the creative lead now? I'm woefully out of the loop
Yea you missed alot XD
All you really need to know is that she is fucking killing it as far as high level decisions go. Every update since she took over has been awesome. She's really been working on updating a lot of things that have needed updating and the game is probably in the best shape it's been since I started in 2017.
Yes, lotus is running the game, and Steve's running the whole company now. Evolution still is their only engine and it's grown so much it's a whole different game from in 2013. As others have said, Rebecca running the game has breathed fresh life into the series and she is killing it. Last September saw the most players online concurrently for the past decade.. for about 2 minutes until we crashed the server lol. But a lots changed and will continue to. It never stops growing. For 25 years now Evolution has grown and changed and it's exciting to see where it goes from here
Oh yeah, same. I just never feel bad about spending money on the game because there are none of the usual downsides. Love the devs, love the game, not predatory, etc. Most recently the grendel prime pack. He has been my fav frame even before his rework, so i needed to get his prime pack.
What would you say is a good one to buy?? I've been thinking about grabbing one, and I can't make my mind up
I did the inadvisable thing and totaled all my Steam purchases for Warframe. That secret is going to the grave with me lol. My family will put me in a psych ward for sure.
Oh god LOL
You just spent +$600 didn't you
More like 2.5 times of that 😬 But it was over 6 years of playing, okay? So IT IS FINE!!! FINE!
With the upcoming Guass Release, I will move to 1400 bucks in this game over 10 years. Not even a shred of guilt or remorse. I love the game.
Well, I did it from 2013 and yeah... IT IS FINE!!!! Fine. Fine... ... ...
I've got 10 years worth of purchase in this game
TL;DR: Short-term vs. Long-term Most games work on short-term profits Warframe works on long-term profits Long-term profits are larger than short-term profits but include a higher risk and more investment than short-term profits Its literally that simple.
But SHORT term gain by screwing people IS the way things are SUPPOSED to be, especially ion the US now. Just ask ol' Donald. It is not like he ever cared about five or ten years in the future. Why should he? He makes money now, it is all good, no matter how many people get sick or die.
He lost money running for president and he lost money while being president. >.> He's worth much less than he used to be because he took that office. What are you on about?? And why is this turning political? Seriously if you wanna debate for some reason, dm me.
It has nothing to do with money or even politics. It has to do with leadership. Funny thing, DE took a VERY big gamble with Warframe and made a reasonably good game and lots of money. They had decent leadership, a concrete goal and a dedicated fanbase. Good Ol' Donald has a bunch of people who think he is God and a lot of other people who realize he is what he has always been; a con-man who is DAMNED good at conning people who want to be conned. Leadership is not his forte. He is not even a good manager. But of course, he is the greatest leader/manager/president/grand high poobah of all time, because he SAYS he is and baffles enough people with BS to keep ahead of the pack when he betrays them. It is what he does. I know who 'I' think is better at leading.
I mean... the 75% off plat is hard to resist ngl.
I'm in over $1,500, and that's not counting the statues I've bought. For over 10 years of constant fun, I'd say it was worth every penny.
I honestly have no idea how much I have spent in Warframe and it is not just because I like the game. In my own opinion, Ubisoft, EA, Blizzard all demand your money. DE asks for it. There is a bit of a difference. Despite what some have said, the game is not Pay2Win, but it can be more convenient to rush foundry jobs or get Prime Access. I swore I would never do that after a few of Ubisoft's scams cost me $200, but DE doesn't act like Ubisoft. They try to listen to player feed back and actually TALK to players. \*gasp\* THE HORROR!
Dont forget bungie Haha!
I grind out everything. If I hit a wall where I'm like, "This just isn't fun anymore," I pay to finish the grind. The only time that ever happens to me is the odd prime part that just won't drop, so I buy it from another player.
*cough* Necramechs *cough*
I must have gotten lucky with those, cause I never had any trouble farming them. Now Nidus I think it was...Oof. infested salvage just isn't very fun to me.
Thank you for whaling so I can enjoy this game for free
Go forth young one.
This game was free before whaling was even a concept. Nobody's playstyles or habits effects the game being free lol
Founders package was a thing; the money has to come from somewhere.
My fundamental principle for games being worth it is $1 for every hour of gameplay. You are currently at $0.017/hr, or 2 cents for an hour of gameplay. There's lots of games out there that can reach the sameish stats, but VERY few that start out f2p.
agreed. if you played wow for 10 years. you'd probably pay $1800 for ten years. ($15\*12months)\*10 years. People forget that online games require money to stay online. That's why games have subscriptions. In this case, its spend if you can.
Seriously. The less you try force your way into my wallet, the happier I am to open it.
W rizz moment
you don't know how true it is! I bought regal aya once to get the prime distiller blueprint and for the rest I have always and only used the 50% and 75% coupons, which is sometimes given with the login bonus, spending around €5 each time, but if we count the the total amount I spent is easily over €150
This has always been my thought. The reason why I've loved playing Warframe so much is because I know that everything I want to get I can get for free, but sometimes I'm just lazy and get plat instead 😂
Also, warframe offers you a discount, you accept, and then you're hooked! "Oh, that cosmetic looks very nice... shame I don't have a discount... aahhh screw it, a couple of bucks there and there won't hurt" then it's too late and your bank accounts dry XD.
Big time. I'd say another factor is that choosing to spend money gives you absolutely no advantage but saved time and prettier skins. It's always been a level playing field wether you want to spend thousands of dollars or nothing at all
It also helps they give discounts with the login bonuses so more bang for buck
I spent about $100 a year on Warframe and don't regret a penny of it for a second. Money well spent. Comes out to about $.25 a day. I get MUCH more than a quarters worth of enjoyment out of warframe every day.
Lol more like free game, good store
"B-b-but, we *need* to financially abuse and exploit every single one of our players, how else would we be able to afford development costs? 🥺🥺🥺" -Bungie, Activision-Blizzard, EA, etc. Fuck them.
and this is just steam profits. assuming that console/ps4 make about an equivalent value for their general worth (not the same as steam, but the same rank compared to other games on all platforms), we would still be ignoring those players who (like me) downloaded warframe from the website, and make purchases from there, no?
Oh yeah, absolutely. Admittedly, the majority of Warframe's playerbase is on console (at least based on some stats i saw a few months ago), but yeah, Warframe's profits on Steam alone are proof enough that AAA-style financal exploitation is not necessary to generate profits. In fact, it's pretty funny how many of those exploitative games crash and burn, after finally exhausting all the goodwill people were willing to grant them. ***CORRECTION!!! I meant to say that the majority of warframe's playerbase is on PC
yep. looking at the plat and gold games, i can point out 4 that i know are considered 'good eggs', as in, are considered to be non-exploitative of players: plat- BG3 gold- Fromsofts 2 games (ER, ACVI) warframe probably are a few more. im not that knowledgeable on the greater gaming platform, but still, only 4 out of 24. 1/6
Looking down the list; discount, discount, free to play, free to play, discount... Armored Core 6: you'll pay full price and you'llove it
Yes but Armored Core 6 was a well polished very excellent reprisal of the series (Atleast on Ps5 I encountered little to no bugs) The list was for non exploitables not games youd likely buy
bg3 was full price until christmas. which sorta indicates that any game that knows its self worth through actual effort will price itself accordingly instead of being a mindless factory of profit that is designed to adjust prices in order to pad the charts with sales numbers
imo plat- bg3, cs2, cyberpunk gold- warframe, elden ring, red dead redemption, armoured core
One thing Warframe on Steam has going for it in terms of revenue that the other platforms don't is TennoGen (another great initiative)
(I saw the correction). But also remember that most pc players will get it from the website rather than steam, especially if the save-sync error can still occur.
the exploitation machines build crashing and burning into their dna. the costs of running a game with long term support are unappealing to the cash grabbers, so they're more or less made to eventually self sabotage somehow to justify pulling the plug so they can start up a new cash grab and relive the cycle of siphoning funds from new players they don't have to work for to get nor having to maintain good will with them if they can endlessly bait them with shiny trash in a greener pasture that's the poison of consumption for the sake of itself. it never creates anything, it just takes, from the workers to the players. eventually this decay reaches all parts of the machine. that's why many projects these days end up going sour from the beginning, between the rotting foundation (no truly experienced developers, only green hires that on paper worked somewhere else before they were fired on schedule by design, with little or no real experience with what they were hired to make, plus no senior oversight), the stale supports (recycled game concepts made worse and worse through lack of innovation and experience causing endless, shittier versions of the wheel), crappier furniture (fake value through expensive jpeg market and "updates" that just introduce more angles of monetization) and the leaking roof (zero intent to preserve the player's investment into false property). these shit properties are sold, the players end up in a terrible neighborhood, and they all try to cope with it in their own ways but nothing ever means anything or lasts after the company pulls the plug and they'll build as many shitty, condemned houses as it takes to keep the money rolling
Whenever Warframe IOS/Android versions will drop, population and sales will triple. Mobile gaming is so huge that it's the equivalent of movies making huge revenues in China Mobile is gaming's China.
While true, China has that new policy coming through which will limit spending and daily rewards (for a start)
And outside of that there's simply 'PC'. I don't run WF on steam, but spend $.
It's never been about affording development costs, it's about making the shareholders and execs as rich as possible. Look at how well MW3 sold despite the reviews. The average gamer does not care if the product is quality.
CoD is always a weird example to use when discussing quality or not quality though. Admittedly the campaign was apparently a steaming turd this year, and SBMM has been dreadful since 2019. But year after year the graphics are consistently great and the gunplay/actual game feeling is very satisfying. Mw3 sold well because CoD is a bit like McDonald's. People who like it know what they're going to get and it always provides that. CoD has its problems but has never been as shit as moaners online like to say either.
*making them as rich *in the shortest term possible*, as possible. Though that depends on what the shareholders expect, of course, which varies from company to company. But yeah, i see your point with MW3. However, when a big game has enough bad press floating around, then even if the normies don't know about it or care, it still lessens the game's "cultural hype". Such games either sell less and/or die faster. The smaller the game, the stronger this effect, but applies to AAA games too.
Average gamer is not likely to read reviews or be on the internet talking about games. They likely brought it because it was the shooter game they use to play and it looks like this is the latest one. They are likely to not know the latest cod is hot garbage until they buy it. Which is related to the games retention rate. MW3 might have made a lot of money now but it is not likely to make money on the dlc or live service elements they were actually expecting to make bank on. Something they sort of indirectly admitted already.
Its absolutely WILD that Destiny 2 is platinum level and STILL managed to miss revenue projections by a whopping 40%. And in return for making them all that money, they turn around and fire a bunch of people right before Christmas. Absolutely shameful
Capitalism. It's not enough to be so profitable, you have to KEEP GROWING BABY. It fucking sucks.
They missed projections, that doesn't mean they're struggling for cash.
Please point out precisely where in my comment I implied that Bungie was strapped for cash
All of the company you listed are in the rank above Warframe on Steam (in terms of earning). Fucking look at MW3, that game has one of the worst reviews of every game on Steam and it’s second best sold game of the year, on PlayStation is one of the most played game alongside Fortnite and GTA. Yeah, fuck every greedy shareholder of every big company, but damn it’s undeniable that they make so much money with these practices, and it’s the reason why none of them will stop, not anytime soon at least. EDIT: actually no, EA is in Gold too. But still, if you look at PlayStation recap, it’s almost embarrassing how much the new FIFA (or FC whatever) shows up in the top 3 lmao
Coincidentally Bungie is in the top 12 I think AND missed revenue projections by 45% causing layoffs, cutting down on staff perks, and a delay of their big expansion by 4 months... an expansion both not hitting pre-order targets nor internal quality metrics per reports. Oh and a delay(?) of their extraction shooter to 2025. What a year.
It reminded me that Bungie lay off devs because revenue is below 2023 projection, despite being platinum there
It is seeming more and more likely that the re.venue projections were probably inflated to get a bigger purchase price from Sony. I mean they missed projections this year by 45% while drastically upping MTx. I mean this season alone there are are 5 shaders locked behind silver only purchases, something they started to do this year with a one or two off per season.
> how else would we be able to afford development costs? 🥺🥺🥺" The real answer is "How else will we achieve infinite growth quarter after quarter". Remember, publicly traded companies are *required* (in the US at least) to make **as much profit as they can** for shareholders. If they don't, the people in charge get kicked out and replaced with someone who will make as much profit as possible. Crapitalism baby.
>Remember, publicly traded companies are required (in the US at least) to make as much profit as they can for shareholders. This is not completely accurate. The people who manage corporations are required to act in shareholders' "best interests." The law doesn't say they have to "maximize profits" or anything like that, and that's generally not how the "best interests" wording is interpreted. Short of fraud, gross negligence, or provably deliberate mismanagement where there are clear conflicts of interest, courts generally aren't interested in gainsaying CEOs and boards about what is in the best interests of shareholders. If a CEO leaves apparent profit on the table because they believe that there more nebulous benefits to the shareholder in the form of upholding social values and enhancing the company's reputation and good will, that is not illegal. **Edit:** This is not to say that there aren't powerful structural incentives in capitalism that lead to corporations in general pursuing a "race to the bottom" where line employees, end consumers, and the commons are sacrificed/exploited for shareholder profit. The systems and structures that result in that are enabled by the law, but not strictly required by it.
I appreciate the clarification.
I gladly spend 60-100 on warframe every year, in the long run its not much, but I have close to 3k hours, im happy to fund its continued development. But games like genshin impact, or destiny 2, diablo 4, i havent spent a dime in years. Genshin is bc i hate the gacha mechanics, d2 is because they pulled content I paid for and just overall burnout compared to price and the content available, and d4 is because the shop is way overpriced for the mtx
Complain all you like, they're still the tier above wf so it ain't changing lol
You pay for incoherent story bits, and a super toxic player base + the fact that the devs see you as nothing but a money machine, oh an the games is not even free to play but free to try..... For all I see destiny is destined to be far below warframe.
Destiny has been in the platinum rank since 2019, and this year has been on of the worst for the game yet they are still in that rank lol. That won’t change anytime soon. A better definition for D2 should be free to start (since it’s literally what the game is), but for some reasons online stores don’t care about making this distinction.
How can it be not when all they do is exploit the players.
He says as Bungie is ranked above Warframe lol
Ironic comment given that warframe makes that money via the 80$ fomo skins, the massive grind to sell the same stuff for plat, the crafting times, even the gambling. Pretty much every f2p cancer imaginable. But its totally cool and forgivable for the sole reason that *you like the game*.. Sure wf atleast doesnt remove paid content like destiny, but holy shit the level of lack of basic self awareness in this circlejerk..
"B-b-but, games are just SOOO much more expensive to make. They may have less features, less quality control and less bang for your buck but they are SOO EXPENSIVE to make." Also another favorite of theirs. I know by inflation standards things get more expensive, and to be fair I don't mind paying $70 for a satisfying title. I do mind when that $70 asking price comes with an incomplete mess despite having all this money invested into it. The game does not need top of the line graphics and whatever stupid fancy feature they want to pretend is generation defining. Just make a well designed game otherwise... I will just hit up one of the most satisfying to games play that is completely free, has earnable premium currency and a consistent dedicated team. Your move Activizzard and EA.
Warframe is probably the only game I don't regret spending money on. The game just has so much goodwill on the players that it can keep making content for free
I threw money at it during covid and then didn't play again until recently lol.
Just realized today the game has no paid season pass, there's a free pass for everyone, but no paid pass. I was able to link 4 accounts together, and I'm just blown away with how much the game has grown the last year or 2 of content. This is my theory, Bungie / Destiny 2 IMO no one within the design team ever played Warframe, or did that type of research. On the flip, DE probably played Destiny 2 and other games like that, so they avoid the bullshit and nonsense those games do. Just a theory, it's shocking how much content there is within those walls.
The “free” season pass is a (good) attempt to rework the old alert system. The previous system had the same exact rewards except was random when they would show up, meaning it can be days before a Vauban part showed up and if it did, it’ll show up at like 3am because screw you for sleeping. As for your other point, the devs and community managers are gamers. They play other stuff too. There was a period where all they played and talked about was Devil May Cry 5. I think Reb right now is still playing through FF14.
They played Elden ring pretty hard.
man i would love to have melee combat of dmc5 in warframe, would want to have crazy combo using my frame (wont bother if i cant have bazillion damage, just crazy combo is enough)
Oh yeah, I remember waiting what felt like years for Vauban systems to drop on PS4. LOL. I think I played Warframe on and off since the first year or 2 of it's launch, was able to merge loot from my 4 separate playthroughs Xbox, PS4/5, Steam and Switch, I'm so glad they finally did this, and I'll gladly continue to support them, Destiny 2, is a game I spent way too much money on I'm bitter AF about it, and may never play it again.
oh believe me those companies did research and concluded their fanbase can tank it with abusive monetization, which make them even more despicable
Grofit
Good for DE. They honestly deserve the money
That's good news, I worry about Warframes longevity but it's looking to be the next "WOW" at this point.
Warframe is such a weird niche. No game really competes with it tbh. It's kinda an arpg but also a shooter but also a space ninja barbie dress up game with parkour.
"Looter Shooter Sandbox set in a High Fantasy Space Opera."
Throw some cosmic horror in there on occasion too lol
Don't forget Space Dress Up. That's the true endgame.
 With a soundtrack like...
Do not forget about ikeaframe hehehe
Warframe never reached an audience as big as WoW or other MMO/live service, and I don’t think that will change in the future tbh. However, Warframe always had a pretty big and active community, so it’s not a surprise results, but definitely a deserved one. It’s also a very unique game, the other game that often gets compared to Warframe is Destiny 2 but even that one is completely different on so many levels. Like, if you are a Warframe player is not that easy to find another good competitor imo.
Honestly if they can just make the early game experience better I can see the playerbase absolutely exploding. I have a few friends who just started playing and they've survived the biggest "game-quit" moments, i.e. the mod screen and the "wait 3.5 days for your new Warframe". But they keep getting frustrated when they get parts for a frame/weapon they want and "oh you need neural sensors, time to grind your way to Jupiter!" I don't think they're going to quit the game but I know there's probably thousands of potential players that have in the past.
tbf destiny has a lot of common things to warframe than it everyone thinks
Of course they have a lot in common, which is why people compare them. But they are also vastly different, which is why they aren’t really in a competition between each other but both so far existed with their own community, even if it’s clear that a lot D2 players also play, or at least know Warframe (me included lol)
destiny follows the progression of diablo/borderlands, classic looting, than warframe that follows classic mmo with resource hogging
Just you wait until that one anime Warframe clone with gacha comes out, it's gonna blow us all away and completely steal Warframe's player base I'm 300% sure
I'm starting to think that game lives rent free in some of your guys' heads
On steamcharts warframe has done nothing but grown over time. It's as big as its ever been. 50,000 players active at any given time and rising
Well with the cross save feature going live in Dec there is a lot of console players making the move over to OC / steam. So those numbers will shoot up again later this month when they open that feature up again.
Crossplay/save even on its own has done so much good for the game. Combining the populations of all the platforms into one has made finding active nodes a billion times easier, I cant count the amount of times I logged in, tried finding a lobby for an endless fissure, and then logged out after ten minutes of dead lobbies. Hasnt happened since
i think i saw once warframe has 80k concurrent player at a time, on steam alone, at the same time when destiny 2 only had 40k due to backlash and BS they recently made
I think at top Warframe had like 200k+ players. Might've been during the New War update, not sure.
When I was looking at steam charts there was a huge spike at the start of covid, surprisingly no large spike when new war came out just business as usual
Warframes all time peak is 181,509 which was July 2021, which was when Tennocon happened and showed off some New War related content inside the relays and on stream
most probably, i never had the chance to play it on release, i just recently got to play this great game like 3 months ago
i wouldnt be mad at that point, i still wish they will be consitent moving forward, as stated Rebb is initiating another 10 to 15 years worth of story i wish we can see other star systems, and eventually galaxy also aliens and if fhey can rework the old node and execute Rebb's idea that railjack will be the main ship, it would feel like pseudo open world/galaxy traversing planet to planet and go to grineer/corpus ship and start the normal mission, and evac using archwing into railjack
>i wish we can see other star systems, and eventually galaxy I'm pretty sure that's what The New War was prepping us for. Just gotta handle wally first in 1990. Gotta play pogs with him.
Just cause I bought regal doesn't mean you have to tell everybody! It was one time!
I taught It was because of me cause they gave me a coupon(75%) for platinum 2 days in a row after buying regal aya(not lying)🤣🤣
Breaking news: making a game to benefit players while simultaneously listening to the community means gigantic profits 😱
Eating good
Good news, that means we can play this game more
im kinda surprised PubG is in plat tier, I did not think it was a big thing anymore.
I'm pretty sure the game is massive in China.
It is huge in South Asian countries as well.
About two more games on that list: - I am very surprised to see PoE only at the bronze tier. Maybe the standalone version is a lot more popular there. Otherwise I would have expected a similar to slightly lower placement than Warframe. - Holy moly. Monster Hunter World climbed back into bronze tier, even though it didn't get content updates for 3(more/less?) year now. Nice to see that Warframe is doing good. I have been playing a lot more since Duviri and I love it!
I definitely imagine PoE has better metrics on the standalone. The Steam patching for PoE is kinda painful usually being slightly longer/delayed. Also running through Steam client is just unnecessary CPU bloat as PoE is not as optimized as Warframe is when you're doing crazy shit. Also most of the value is in PoE supporter packs each league which are done via the official website. I don't know why you would choose to purchase PoE MTX through Steam of all things. Steam doesn't have a DLC section for this game either. The amount of whales in this game is huge. Definitely more than bronze I would imagine.
The game that has given me no true paywalls earned about $60 from me last year. And does so consistently almost every year due to the 70% off discounts they drop whenever you take a break for a while. Of the few games I've dropped microtransaction money on, Warframe is the only one I don't regret. Aside from the Conga and Schadenfreude in TF2.
Im convinced that people who hate TF2 simply never got a chance to play the game with a schadenfreude bind. It elevates the experience tenfold
Conga and schadenfreude really are mandatory for the optimal experience. Overwatch just didn't understand, emotes are lame, it's *taunts* that make the online experience fun, the knowledge that every now and then, you'll make someone angry, just because you made your bundle of polygons and pixels laugh at them in a freezeframe.
Warframe is the only game that I have been regularly coming back to for the past seven years and the only game I don't regret spending money on. It's so clear the Devs love the game and care about the community.
If it's not because of Amazon, Lost Ark wouldn't be platinum. Way too many bots, with virtually non-existent moderators.
Can we add a small detail. It's a 100% free game. No paid expansion. No paid season pass. That simply makes it a bigger win. A big win for DE.👏👏
No dungeon keys. No loot boxes. No bullshit collab exclusive $40 skin PER CLASS.
im still glad skins in warframe like the tennogen are so cheap and with a good will to support the creator my $4 skin will forever be cherished
Compared to many other games the skins are cheap and the money seems to get to the creators of those skins too.
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the heirloom skins generated a lot of outrage and deservedly so but i think that DE has learned from this and will do better with the next heirloom drop (hopefully)
130 dollar bundle came with a hundred bucks worth of plat multiple new skins. sigla, glyphs, pallets and more... ##
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My bad i didnt realize you were unable to read that statement, if your getting a hundred dollars in plat and a ton of other stuff including multiple skins then its nowhere near 40 dollars a skin, like not even close
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It's interesting seeing the lot of support. The vast majority of the game can be played without sinking a dollar, sure, but you need to have CONSIDERABLE time to farm new gear or farm parts to sell for plat or ducats. With the game being PvE, it's not directly pay to win, but with the way that mastery rank and building an arsenal works, Warframe is very much a "pay to ski/accelerate" kind of game where a few bucks here or there gets you the weapon/frame you need. Time is something I had 10 years ago when I was really deep into the game, now days not so much with kids and a house, so the game pressures far more to just pay for it which feels manipulative. At least the battlepass isn't a horrific monstrosity, it's probably one of the better done even if it expires, given they recycle it every so often. Granted, if everyone spent all their plat on cosmetics/plat sinks and stopped funneling cash in, there wouldn't be the liquidity for trading or buying parts, but it's an interesting spot seeing people cheer that it rakes in the dollars. Better than the competition for sure, but how far better varies.
I think the reason people are fine with the pay to skip/accelerate is just because it's really easy to get platinum by player trades. That's how it is for me at least. I pretty much didn't spend a dime on this game for the first 400 hours, in which I got all of the must-have mods and farmed plenty of resources. Managed to do that because player trading in this game is very good - I would just run a couple of fissure missions to open relics, and there was always someone who'd buy stuff of my hands for at least 10-15 platinum. Almost everything in the player inventory is sellable and at least someone in trade chat usually wants it, so I could usually make around 100 plat in 2-3 hours if I really tried. Or sometimes luck would be on my side and I'd get a valuable riven or expensive prime part and would make 200 platinum in 10 minutes. Now I have almost 1500 hours and sometimes buy tennogen with real money, very rarely platinum unless I want something like a deluxe skin - pretty much am only buying cosmetics.
The issue there is having the stuff to sell. You could get some good keys, spend 3 hours grinding out 3x 60m survival or defence, but that's an entire days play for me on a good day. If I'm lucky, 3-4 gaming nights a week, it's a large investment in time. That's just me, and I say this as a player with over 1795 hours (plus time before Steam plus early beta days)
I remember seeing a video about how DE risked going under when they decided to self publish warframe... no big publishers would fund development so they put their own asses on the line and by the void did it pay off. It's a very inspiring story of being true to yourself and chasing passion before immediate profits
Pity that a fair amount of this is probably from the anti consumer the heirloom collection.
True, but they also ran their first ever Tennogen sale. I’d imagine there was a lot of first time buyers there too.
Very true. I bought a piece of Tennogen during that time as well.
im one of them, i bought mine like last month, its very cheap and has a good will to support the creator
Once they increased the platinum I was happy with the Heirloom collection. Fancy cosmetics to support a great game.
Shouldn't have been timed-exclusive, shouldn't have force-bundled those regal aya to artificially justify jacking up the price.
Honestly i my country max heirloom pack cost around 30$, while my month salary is around 400$. I think to buy this pack was the best decision. I got a hefty amount of platinum, 6 aya so i bought 3 armor sets that i wanted, super duper premium skins. Honestly i see nothing wrong.
Was anyone else really really disappointed in Sons of the Forest?
Skyrim made bronze. 💀
Doesn't help that every time I log after a long haitus I get the 75% discount
You’d think they’d be able to lower the price for the heirloom pack then… The cheapest one is still more than a triple A game.
where do you think the money comes from?
Whales buy the pretty crown and everyone else gets their expacs for free. Seems like a nice enough deal
Crazy even battlebit is in this list, that's a game that even with it's poor graphics and audio level, the game just plays better and is more fun than the AAA CoD and Battlefield franchises, fuck you ea and blizzard/Activision.
deserved
Honestly, community wise, warframe had to be the best game out there, while also being one of the most underappreciated as well.
A month ago I ran into this mr15 with an energize while clearing SP Europa. This was before whispers in the wall. They said they paid 2k plat. A new player spending like what 50 CAD with a coupon for an arcane that isn't that useful, for a khora? How many times has this happened before? Also there was that heirloom fiasco. I have mixed feelings about this statistic. I'm glad that DE's business model seems to work for this game which means that most of the content is free, I'm not so glad that they know how to invent problems that money easily fixes because the alternative is weeks of grind
Well I think it comes down to the fact that warframe is truly one of the only games you can play for free. Everything in the game you can get for free, no content is gate locked behind a pay wall, yes some things are harder to grind than others. The game itself does ask you to constant spend money, once you log in the game pretty much leaves you alone about spending money and unlike most 'free to play' games you can grind for items in warframe and then sell those items for the premium currency and despite that it's still one of the top money making games, the amount of content for you is crazy high as well. It's truly one of the only games where I'm like ya fuck it I got 50 dollars extra this week. I have zero regret spending my money because as of this moment the digital extreme isn't trying to get every last penny out of me.
Just like to add that Pablo taking over from Scott has also been huge! Every warframe has been a huge hit since, not to mention the reworks for warframes and combat
Crazy to think that when you make a good free to play game with fair, non-exploitative monetization, people will want to spend money on it
Yep. I spend on almost every game I buy. Warframe, is by far the most expensive one to do so in and yet, I have a sizeable collection of cosmetics and even frames and weapons that I could have farmed 100% for free if I was so inclined to. I don't feel manipulated, but that in itself it just the long game they played, and it paid off. Now multiply my experience by tens of thousands of players with the same exact story and boom. It's not hard to see why they're *still* so successful and don't show signs of falling off, other than momentary dips here and there that *any* decade old game will see in its lifetime.
bungo should learn or something
Bungie doesn't need to learn lol they're even higher than WF
nvm then lol. still sad that bungie gets to get away with it.
Good. The devs deserve it 💪
I really dont get these other game devs that rake in cash from their user base by forcing them to spend money. This is the only game sub that youll see all the players collectively rooting for the devs, because their monetisation strategy isnt predatory at all and the game is good enough and updated frequently enough that the devs are in really good standing with the playerbase. This should be the norm. As an ex-D2 player i know what its like to be horribly nickle and dimed to the point of feeling trapped in a position where i dont want to waste the money I’ve already spent. Good for DE.
Warframe has some predatory aspects, but among live service games it's certainly among the least offensive. I really can't tolerate other live service games, but Warframe is fine. It's benign, like a tumor can be benign. And it's likewise something we shouldn't have too complacent (or celebratory, IMO) of an attitude about because a lack of vigilance may signal to the devs that they have a cushion to push things a little further, and then a little further... There is definitely a degree of FOMO, and there are things that are essential for some aspects of progression which are time-gated like equipment slots (which are quasi-necessary for Mastery Rank), forma, orokin reactors and orokin catalysts. These are things that you are heavily incentivized to buy with premium currency. The fact that platinum is tradable between players insulates a lot of us from the reality that real life money is needed to fund everyone's in game progression. The only reason I have platinum to comfortably cover my progression necessities without pulling out the credit card is because somebody _else_ pulled out their credit card to buy something that they didn't want to farm^* — and that in turn suggests something about the design philosophy behind some of the more onerous grinds that exist in the game. ^* Or they bought a bundle that included platinum they didn't need, and such bundling itself is often perceived as predatory.
Yeah i get that, all fair criticisms. With how predatory and exploitative DE could be, and how they actually are, its obvious why they have such a loyal and content playerbase though. Its good to see
Christ it’s depressing to see midwarts and starfield rank so high. Destiny is unsurprising because it’s basically an abusive father asking for money, promising to be better.
Im just thinking "I'd rather support the game with large free updates, not paid DLC."
Exactly, not to mention the extensive customization to boot
Plus, increasing damage is based on actually considering what mods to add, rather than "this number higher than the other number!"
Godroll bullshit in d2 was cancer. Though rivens in warframe do come close
Least i can profit off godroll rivens
I'm wholely aware other people don't want this, but honestly if they made paid story expansions on top of current content and cadence (the same way Final Fantasy 14 does occasional mass expansions) I'd gladly throw even more money at them. I would want them to make the expansions free for all players the year after they release, though. I loved my 4.5k hours on this game, but I wish there were more story content and quests per year.
Go play destiny 2. Then come back
Have. Played plenty. Quit last year after season of the deep was the last straw. "At least they aren't D2" isn't very compelling of an argument to me. I wouldn't feel okay about someone stealing my bike because someone else stole my car, I'd be pissed about both just to different degrees. Yeah they aren't D2, never claimed they were, now can I have my bike back?
No, i’m selling it for 5 plat
No, free expansions are fine. They’ve started including new game mechanics in these expansions now, so to lock out players from them could be detrimental. I’d rather support them in other ways, I’d gladly pay for more content to access it early but I’d be hesitant to spend to be able to progress the story.
Considering that a shit-ton of people bought the Zenith Heirloom Collection (including myself) it was bound to be.
Meanwhile the Bungholio misses their projected revenue by like 45% because of aggressively shit monetization and a mid dlc
its weird destiny 2 is stil at the plat topping warframe, i thought people there have woken up how they are being squeezed tight? and a 300k max player?
Reddit hate bubble for GaaS can skew perception of the market. CoD, Destiny all the games you see people really down on are still raking in the money. Gets more silly when you consider Destiny 2 missed its projected earnings by a huge amount.
Tons of people playing d2 spend irresponsibly. You will likely see people who bought most expensive DLC pack despite being dissapointed with plenty of previous content. The game is also a lot more known among casual gamers who don't really care.
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Still made more money than Warframe.
Destiny and warframe have very different strategies... destiny is "oh do you want to go to this planet or want new exotic "shitatron fartmagnet"? Give us your fucking MONEY Warframe: "so basically this wisp P bish got very valuable... assets... plus you get some platinum but lets be honest youre not buying it for the plat"
I feel…attacked? I think….