TennoCon 2018: Why Warframe will never launch (and why that doesn’t matter)

There’s a question that floats around our Massively OP office discussions occasionally, especially when updating which game is labeled what: Will Warframe ever launch? Or did it? We’ve even been known to hunt back through the years to make sure we didn’t miss a clandestine launch somewhere, and we always come up empty. Then we theorize why the game is still technically labeled beta and wonder if the swap to the label “launched” will ever happen in the future. Thanks to TennoCon 2018 and Live Operations and Community Producer Rebecca Ford, we now have the answer to the question, “When will Warframe leave beta?”.

Eternal beta

Wait, Warframe has never launched?! That might come as a shock to a few. Some folks, especially newer players, may not realize that Warframe is not technically a launched game — at least as far as nomenclature is concerned. After all, the game has all the earmarks of being launched (regular expansion updates, cash shop, etc.). So for all intents and purposes, it is launched, it is just happens to missing that moniker. So does that even matter?

In my interview with Ford, I asked if we somehow missed the switch to launch, and how the company views the game and why. She replied, “Oh no, it’s in beta.” Well, at least we didn’t miss anything! Would Warframe ever move out of beta? “No,” she said. “Why would we?” What does the label do? Ford noted that many folks already consider the game launched, and pointed out that it only says beta in one place on the site: the open beta agreement. “That’s the only place that we are technically still in beta. Everything else is a pseudo launch.” She continued,

“There’s literally no reason to do it other than the fact that if we say we’re launching people are going to have expectations. And we’re like, well, we like what we’re doing now, and we can continue to have our own launches for specific content types. But if we ever said Warframe was launched as a game it would be a farce for what that term means. So even if we are making a farce of beta right now, it would be a further farce of launch if we use that term.”

So there you go. Digital Extremes simply believes it is no slave to nomenclature. It ignores standard naming practices and just focuses on making a good game and delivering more and more content to its fans. Why mess with a good thing? It never had an actual launch, and it never will. There’s simply no point to. What about having a chance for fans and devs to celebrate as most launches tend to be? For Ford, there is no need for any launch party because TennoCon is their party (and a fun party it is — see this year’s in the gallery below!).

So don’t bother categorizing Warframe within the common labels. If the game must be labeled, we’ll just have to make a new one like Warframe beta or betaunch (launcheta?) just for it. After all, it is its own unique beast. Hm, suddenly, I wonder if I can use a Fortuna echo-lure on Warframe for conservation purposes. We certainly never want this game to lose its magic!

Check out the rest of our TennoCon 2018 coverage!