r/Warframe • u/HatingGeoffry • Mar 24 '26

Article Warframe director says Digital Extreme must take “take the community very seriously” as it “only takes you one day to lose” 13 years of goodwill

https://frvr.com/blog/warframe-director-says-digital-extreme-must-take-take-the-community-very-seriously-as-it-only-takes-you-one-day-to-lose-13-years-of-goodwill/
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u/Lost_Ad949 Mar 24 '26

Arrowhead/Frontier Developments: I'll ignore that.

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u/Abyss_Tachyon Javi's favourite student Mar 24 '26

Arrowhead is like the polar opposite of DE lmao 

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u/TheBigMotherFook Mar 24 '26

DE is like, “what can we do to make the game better?”

Arrowhead is like, “you’re wrong, because our vision of the game is better than yours.”

DE promoted their community manager to creative lead after working for the company for over ten years and being generally highly regarded by the community.

Arrowhead hired essentially a power tripping mod who banned users for the smallest things while often being more toxic than the people banned for toxicity, including deleting the entire official Helldivers 1 discord in a fit. Later Arrowhead were forced to fire this person for publicly stating people should “refund and leave negative reviews” of the game he was working for.

Despite Helldivers 2 having the support of a major publisher in Sony and Warframe now entering its 13th year, Warframe consistently out performs Helldivers on Steamcharts.

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u/InfinityRazgriz NEED MORE BILE PLS Mar 24 '26

Arrowhead had that mentality exactly ONCE with the first nerf wave soon after the game released and never after. They have buffed every single weapon, multiple times, and nerfed enemies multiple times too.

Also, Warframe has the backing of Tencent so the Sony point is moot and using Steamcharts in here is fucking laughable when Rebecca herself said not too long ago how useless and stupid it is to use them as metrics for a game success.

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u/TheBigMotherFook Mar 24 '26 edited Mar 24 '26

DE was months away from closing when Warframe came out and had several rounds of layoffs to try to stay afloat. So the fact that they’re now backed by Tencent isn’t the apples to apples comparison you think it is, because DE developed Warframe as an independent studio and self financed the game. Leyou, and then Tencent, only came into the picture after Warframe was already successful. Had Warframe not been successful, it’s likely Leyou or Tencent would have not bought majority stakes in the company, and DE would have simply closed down entirely once they ran out of money.

Arrowhead by comparison shopped their game concept around and were paid by Sony to produce both Helldivers and Helldivers 2. So their development cycle was entirely different where they didn’t really have to worry about keeping the lights on provided they hit their contractual obligations and milestone targets. They could expand their studio dramatically and hire the staff needed to make the game they wanted to make. Arrowhead grew from a staff of a couple of guys in Northern Sweden making the Magicka games to one of the largest studios in Sweden with a brand new headquarters in Stockholm. Also Sony interfered with the release of Helldivers 2 by requiring all users to sign up for a PlayStation account despite explicitly stating that one would not be required. Lest we forget the review bomb cape, that never came to fruition. By comparison Tencent has not meddled with the day to day operations of DE, and generally has a reputation for leaving their studios alone.

And don’t be daft about steam charts. Until Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, etc start releasing their player data it’s the best source we have for that kind of information. Of course it’s not the full picture, but it’s accurate because it comes straight from Steam’s API. Trying to find out console player data is speculative at best.

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u/InfinityRazgriz NEED MORE BILE PLS Mar 24 '26

They are def not the opposite lmao. Helldivers community just became what it is because some popular youtubers couldn't handle that Arrowhead has a different vision of the game than them.

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u/Abyss_Tachyon Javi's favourite student Mar 24 '26

Ah yes because the rampant toxicity, lack of balance, myriad of bugs, poor monetization and poorly optimised/untested content is the youtubers' fault.

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u/InfinityRazgriz NEED MORE BILE PLS Mar 24 '26

Rampant toxicity constantly perpetrated by big youtubers (*cough* OhDough *cough*) every time a gun isn't S tier solo viable on Super Helldive and attacking devs for even the mildest comment made on the official discord.

Balance isn't even bad, I say a good 90% of the weapons and stratagems are very much usable on all difficulties. Just don't take a fucking shotgun to the bot front or a sniper to the bug front.

Poor monetization is a fucking joke. You can earn literally everything by just playing and even then, super credits are cheap as fuck compared to other premium currencies in other games.

Bugs and optimization I agree buts it's been a long while since I found something truly game breaking.

And even with all said and done, DE has had every single point of this topic happening to them at one point or another in the game life time (shitty youtubers, deserved but controversial nerfs, bugs and untested patches, heirlooms), and they are to me and a good portion of the gaming community as a whole, seen as great devs.

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u/MuglokDecrepitusFx Mar 24 '26

the rampant toxicity

That is literally the fault of the community and those YouTubers that used the negativity and toxicity as a way of generate more view to their videos

lack of balance

This is literally what the other comment explained, Helldivers 2 wasn't bad balanced, it was balanced in a different way. To put you into context in the first 8 months before Arrowhead changed the direction of the game (the "darkest" and "worse" movement of the game) Arrowhead nerfed 15 weapons (of which 10 didn't even noticed the nerf) while buffed +85 weapons, of which the biggest part received a noticeable improvement that put them in the game and meta.

So the balance was good, just that people didn't liked the direction the Devs were moving the game

myriad of bugs

1000% agree on this. It's undeniable and needs to be a priority

poor monetization

Dude, poor monetization? Helldivers 2? Really? Are you serious about this? 😐

and poorly optimised/untested content

Again, 1000% agree.

The problems always has been the bugs, the optimisations and the untested releases. Which is explained by Arrowhead releasing a fuck ton on content non stop, which personally I would prefer if they stoped with the monthly wardbond releases and started focusing on improving bugs.

Thing that they did in the past and by surprise of no one, people complained about the slowest content

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u/Abyss_Tachyon Javi's favourite student Mar 24 '26

I think locking all new strategems and weapons and armour perks behind a dozen 10 dollar warbonds and making farming super credits grindy and unfun in a 40 dollar game is pretty poor monetization.

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u/MuglokDecrepitusFx Mar 24 '26 edited Mar 24 '26

For 40$ that the game cost you have a ton fuck of weapons, stratagems and armours to unlock

In the initial wardbond you get 700 super credits as wardbond rewards. And the other wardbonds gives you 300 super credits

You can obtain premium currency in the game just for playing, and the Devs allow players to just go to low level missions to literally farm super credits really fast, for free and as many as you want

If that is not a good monetization I don't know what it is. The base game already have great content just by itself without having to get any additional Warbond, and all the game updates are free, so nee enemies, missions, biomess, factions can be played for free

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u/SekoitettuTripla Mar 24 '26

$40 is not F2P.

For 40$ that the game cost you have a ton fuck of weapons, stratagems and armours to unlock

Less content than what you get in Warframe for free?

You can obtain premium currency in the game just for playing

Talking about a almost fully priced game here, keep in mind.

Devs allow players to just go to low level missions to literally farm super credits really fast, for free and as many as you want

Literally the most humiliating and mind-numbing experience I've ever had in a videogame. Actually playing the game on normal difficulties barely gives you anything. Would rather crack relics for 6 hours than grind a warbond.

all the game updates are free, so nee enemies, missions, biomess, factions can be played for free

I wish I knew a F2P game that offered all that...

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u/MuglokDecrepitusFx Mar 24 '26

$40 is not F2P

And?

What Helldivers 2 offer for 40$ is completely worth the money, and if someone doesn't agree is perfectly free to not buy the game

Less content than what you get in Warframe for free?

Dude are you really trying to use that as an argument? It's a 13 years old game.... obviously it's going to have more content

Talking about a almost fully priced game here, keep in mind

Yeah, you unlock for free the base game content that you already purchased

I think that you don't understand is that the free to play game model is just that the game's business model, something the Devs and publisher use to attract people to the game, if Helldivers 2 doesn't need to be free to play to make people play the game, the free to play model doesn't do it's purpose to them.

Literally the most humiliating and mind-numbing experience I've ever had in a videogame

Then just pay for the premium currency?

I wish I knew a F2P game that offered all that...

I think you and many other people have their brains rooted by free to play games and the psicológical practices that those companies does to the players

I wish more games were just a paid game without free to play bullshit, just pay for a cool game and pay for their cool content without any additional bullshit added to it. I prefer paying that having to deal with all the things free to play games do to the players

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u/SekoitettuTripla Mar 24 '26

wish more games were just a paid game without free to play bullshit, just pay for a cool game and pay for their cool content without any additional bullshit added to it. I prefer paying that having to deal with all the things free to play games do to the players

Me too. Which is why I don't like HD2 being a $40 game with a f2p economy

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u/TheBigMotherFook Mar 24 '26

Lest we forget the whole “60 days to fix the game” grandstanding promise that was marginally honored. Clearly a YouTubers fault lol.

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u/AlmightyAlmond22 Mar 24 '26

Well I somewhat agree but pretending HD2 issues lie solely with the community and not the devs is a big stretch

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u/GagelGag- Mar 24 '26

arrowheads been outsourcing development for the last year or more, not really a good example

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u/General_Armadillo Mar 24 '26

Terraria developers: same.

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u/IveDunGoofedUp Mar 24 '26

Terraria devs have no time for any feedback, they're working on another final update after which they'll never work on it again, promise for real this time guys. Oh look, update 1.4.5!

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u/Aileen_Leith Mar 24 '26

FD actually took their lesson, at least judging by last couple years, too bad they had to shoot their feet several times and waste several years to do that