Destructoid Checkpoint: Why Warframe lived and Destiny died

I never really considered Destiny and Warframe to be competitors. I’m aware that they can both be, somewhat gracelessly, placed in the category of looter-shooter, but that doesn’t mean they are siblings, or even cousins.

The two games were developed in very different ways and from very different origins, had decidedly contradictory monetization patterns, and ultimately became almost entirely different things, loosely connected by the idea that one would put an abnormal amount of time into them because of the grind. 

I played both, somewhat religiously at points, because I just like games. It has been sad to see the downfall of Destiny, and great to watch the continued success of Warframe, but neither one is particularly surprising. Not if you know the lore.

The Origins

Warframe and Destiny could not have had more different starts. Bungie was coming off a hugely successful run with Microsoft as the developer of Halo, one of the biggest gaming franchises on the planet. Halo was, for all intents and purposes, Xbox. 

Destiny would emerge as the offspring of a deal between Bungie and Activision that was so much in the dev’s favor that they would keep the intellectual property that they developed. That’s how hot Bungie was at the time, with some of the biggest publishers in gaming vying for their next project.

For Digital Extremes, the developers of Warframe, things could not have been more different. By the time Warframe rolled around, it was a struggling studio that looked like its best days may have been behind it. 

They had been a major player in the development of Unreal, but by the time they were pitching Warframe, they very famously couldn’t find a publisher willing to partner with them. Not many people seemed to have the vision for what the game was trying to offer, so Digital Extremes did the only thing they could do and started a Founder program, giving potential fans the option to fund the game via some limited-time purchases.

An exclusive Warframe and a couple of weapons were enough to seal the deal with quite a few supporters, and the team managed to scrape together enough cash to get things rolling, which they have been doing ever since. 

Were this a Hollywood movie, much would be made about these two very different starts at life for both these games, and while I don’t want to say that Bungie may have been operating from a place of arrogance over the course of Destiny’s development and launch, they certainly had not seen the grim sights that Digital Extremes had experienced. Sometimes, knowing what awaits you if you make bad decisions can be a powerful element of long-term success.

The highest of highs

It can be hard to tell, but from a pure monetization point of view, we must imagine that Destiny has made more money over the years than Warframe. Destiny has always had a financial barrier to entry, half-assed attempt at “free to play” aside. On the other hand, with just a few missteps, Warframe has always been very F2P-friendly, to the point where you can earn premium currency by farming items and selling them to other players, then use that to buy pretty much everything you might want outside of a limited bunch of cosmetics. 

There is more obscurity around overall player numbers, as platforms like Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch don’t really let us see how many folks are playing, but looking purely at Steam, Destiny has had the higher highs. 

Destiny 2 has an all-time peak of 316,651 players on Steam. Warframe comes in at 181,509. Hardly definitive, but certainly indicative of how both games may have tracked over time, with it being likely that Destiny just had more players.

The reason for this is potentially that Destiny has been seen as the prestige product, and an argument could be made that, at points, it was the ultimate AAA shooter. I’m unsure if any FPS game has ever had the silky smooth gunplay that Destiny had, and it likely would have had a dominant PvP scene if not for terrible, godawful, trash-tier networking. 

Warframe, on the other hand, is more of a traditional third-person shooter and has grown to have a focus on slick ability spam, whirlwind-like melee action, and tremendous area-of-effect shooting. While Destiny 2 players are dealing with a single yellow-bar Captain, Warframe players are halfway across a level with 100 dead enemies behind them, a capture target firmly in sight. 

Ultimately, they offer different styles of play and different challenges. Destiny 2 has something really unique and special in their Raid design, while the build-crafting of Warframe involves the kind of complex synergies, interactions, and mathematics that would leave the average Destiny 2 player scratching their head. 

Where it gets more interesting is that if you go to a site like SteamDB and look at the lifelong player counts for both games, Warframe is in a far more enviable position than Destiny 2. Destiny 2 has, statistically, been dying since it launched. Outside of peaks around release, the baseline number of players has been dropping consistently over time. 

Warframe is the opposite, with an eternally growing baseline of players that steadily increases as time goes on. This is the true secret of growth and health, as it strongly implies that Warframe, despite having lower peaks, and I would argue a troublesome new player experience, seems to just lose fewer players over time. 

I’d argue that a part of this is because Warframe has offered a tremendous variety of gameplay experiences over the years, and its core has also altered dramatically. Destiny has basically been Destiny for a decade, and while that meal is often worthy of a Michelin star, the chef has rarely changed the menu. 

Respecting the players

Now, this is where people might get a little mad at me, but I do believe that Digital Extremes has simply respected their player base more than Bungie has. Bungie’s monetization has long been egregious, while Digital Extremes has programs that allow players access to some of the dev tools. If they can make assets that are good enough, they can end up for sale in the game, providing these fans with a way to earn money for their efforts. The program, called Tennogen, has been called life-changing by some of the participants. 

Bungie has a habit of jumping in to fix mistakes extremely quickly when those mistakes benefit players, and leaving bugs to fester for a very long time, while Digital Extremes has changed entire systems to match exploits or patterns in player behavior. The entire movement system in Warframe at this point is based on players exploiting various move sets or animations so they can move faster across maps. 

I’m not saying that Digital Extremes is perfect; they have most assuredly made mistakes in their time, it is just that as a player of both games, I was always left with the impression that their mistakes were aberrations in a positive pattern, while Bungie’s were them figuring out how far they could push things before havingto claw back a little to keep players happy.

Finally, there is the approach to their new projects. It’s interesting that both have different new games in development at the same time, with Digital Extremes working on Soulframe and Bungie working on Marathon. Both are interesting departures from the titles that built their current success, but the main difference is how they have treated their foundational games.

Warframe has been left in the hands of a team that was a fundamental part of its growth over the years, their ascension to stewards of the title being the natural progression of their artistic efforts and careers. If you ask veteran Destiny players, they tend to feel that Bungie has all but abandoned their Guardians, focusing all their efforts on Marathon, a game that has already been delayed and is currently predicted to be a massive flop as Destiny players fail to find an interest in the PvPvE extraction shooter that Bungie has pinned its future hopes on. 

Meanwhile, Soulframe carries the spirit of Warframe within, just slowed down, the combat far more considered, the game world far more focused, but a natural progression, nonetheless. 

I say this as someone with thousands of hours in both games, but Bungie’s recent moves, from yet another sale of the company, and the all but abandoning of its hottest property, felt like the plans of an organization that was mistakenly assured of its future, unaware that they were leaving their player base behind. On the other hand, Digital Extremes' careful business side but brave artistic side feels like a group of people who know that the time to truly do what they want can be fleeting, and you can spend all that goodwill from the universe far faster than you could ever imagine, but if you just keep the fans on your side, you might just make it. 

I am hopeful that Bungie pulls back from the brink, and I am eager for Digital Extremes to continue their hot streak, but the former could do worse than adopting the latter’s legitimate players-first focus, instead of just pretending they feel the same way.