How Sony Wooed Warframe Onto PS4

We spoke to creative director Stephen Sinclair to find out more about how the PC game made the PS4 launch.

We’ve heard a lot about how Sony has wooed indie developers over the past year. The decision to exhibit indies alongside triple-A titles at the PS4 announcement event became a major talking point back in February. But while the short term benefits of this good PR are obvious to anyone who kept up with PS4 pre-order numbers or the PS4’s US launch, at which it sold over a million units in a day, it’s from the long term benefits that Sony has most to gain.

Enter Digital Extremes. As a developer it’s no spring chicken, having worked on titles ranging from The Darkness 2 to Unreal Tournament way back in 1999, but despite this it’s kept a low profile. Or at least, it did until Sony decided to throw away its old indie rulebook, embrace the studio with open arms and beg to have PC space ninja brawler Warframe ported as a PS4 launch title. In doing so, Sony earned Digital Extremes’ loyalty and admiration, but just how did such a thing come about?

“We came out in March on Steam and started clawing our way up the Steam charts amongst the five other Counter-Strike games and before too long Sony took notice of that and reached out to us,” explains Stephen Sinclair, creative director on Warframe. “Maybe six months before that when we were still in closed beta we started to talk to the big console guys like Xbox Live and PSN, exploring our options there, and we got kind of… I wouldn’t say the door was slammed in our face but we got responses like ‘yeah, I don’t think we’re doing that sort of thing. Maybe come back when you have a publisher?’”

“But with PS4, Sony reached out to us as we were becoming known on Steam and said ‘What would you think about bringing this to PS4 for launch?’ The big questions we had were ‘Are we going to be able to self-publish?’ Yes. ‘Will you support the free-to-play model we’re using?’ Yes. ‘Will we be able to update it like crazy as we have on PC?’ Yes. So after that it was just a question of, s***, send us a dev kit as fast as you can!

“Three months later, we were on the showfloor at E3.”

Once upon a time it would have been inconceivable that Sony would approach such a game, which began life with just 10 developers all “trying to get free from the publisher teat,” but it happened. And it isn’t an isolated case. Sony approached myriad developers and offered them the chance to work on the unannounced PlayStation 4 alongside their higher-powered counterparts. While Microsoft may have ended up doing the same earlier this year, the goodwill inspired by Sony’s inclusive attitude has created massive ripples within the industry.

That much is clear when I ask Sinclair about whether he’d consider bringing Warframe to Xbox One. As it currently stands, Warframe is only a timed exclusive on the PS4. But while Digital Extremes would certainly consider porting to Xbox One if Microsoft approached the studio, Sinclair admits that he personally would prefer it if the PlayStation 4 remained the only console on which we can play the sci-fi shooter.

“Speaking frankly, hopefully we do so awesome on PlayStation 4 that Sony’s just like ‘we want to scratch your back and make sure you’re exclusive to us’, but right now, it’s a timed exclusive,” he explained.

“How can I put this tactfully… You yourself have probably seen the change in the Xbox One strategy after Mattrick left. I think they said ‘well, okay, we’ll be more indie-friendly and we’ll change stuff.’  So they announced their indie programme and how to get free dev kits. But the momentum there and the good will and collaboration with Sony was already in place before then. In talks we had with Microsoft, they were stoked with this new strategy, but Sony had already jumped in with both feet and said ‘let’s do it, let’s get Octodad on there, and Warframe and all that crazy stuff.’”

So for the time being, it seems, PlayStation and PC owners will be the only ones to enjoy Warframe. But what does the future hold for the game? Well, every six to eight weeks the studio aims to roll out major updates, but inbetween these are a range of smaller things to keep people interested, ranging from new weapons to game modes. Seeing as the game isn’t PvP focused, there’s an expectation levelled at the developers to constantly produce new activities. It’s quite a challenge to create content at a rate that pacifies the community’s appetites (even if they’re never quite sated), yet Sinclair reveals this is the first time in the studio’s history that every employee has been focused on one title, arguably easing the load.

With so much going right, I ask Sinclair if there’s anything going wrong. He admits to me that while Digital Extremes’ jaunt onto consoles has been full of positives, there have been one or two hiccups that have given him pause for thought. Chief among these is the console audiences’ widespread disdain for free-to-play titles, which PC players tend to be more tolerant of. Despite the team’s best efforts to prove otherwise, including the fact that the game doesn’t require PS Plus in order to play, the familiar accusations of pay-to-win transactions have been levelled at the studio.

It’s something Sinclair categorically denies, although he does candidly admit there was a time when he thought such a thing was a good idea. Back when the game was in closed beta, the level cap was hidden behind a paywall. As a result, anyone wanting to fully power up their Warframe needed to pay a tiny fee of around $2. It was a one-time fee to unlock the max level, and Sinclair thought it was a great idea. So the team implemented it and waiting for the feedback to roll in, expecting nothing but calm acceptance. This is not what happened.

“OH. MY. GOD. Players on the forums rioted! They said we were the most incompetent people in the world,” Sinclair recalls, laughing. “I was kind of ready to weather that storm, but what shook my conviction was the fact that it was our paying players that were saying this. And that fact really threw me. I thought, okay, well here are people that have already spent money in the game, they’ve bought Founder’s packs, some of them have given hundreds of dollars to support our game and they’re saying this is a huge mistake.

“They said it was a mistake because they have friends from League of Legends, or Team Fortress 2 that aren’t willing to spend, but they want to be able to play with them and have them all on an even level. So ever since then we ripped out the system and made it so that any time there’s something in the game you can buy that’s powerful, there’s something else in the game you can get through time investment or the crafting system.”

Digital Extremes appears committed to making Warframe the best it can be not just for the players, but for the debt it feels it owes Sony as well. With all this in mind I ask Sinclair one final question: next time we speak, if Warframe is as successful as he hopes it’ll be, what does he hope to be able to tell me he’s working on?

There’s a pause, followed by a chuckle.
“If it continues to be successful and that continues onto PS4, then hopefully you’re calling me in two or three years and saying ‘why the hell you still working on this game?’”