Warframe dev’s CEO thinks studios shouldn’t abandon struggling live-service games so quickly: “I think they eject too soon”

Warframe developer Digital Extremes’ CEO Steve Sinclair has said he thinks studios can be a bit too quick to drop live-service games.

Live-service as a field is a particularly tricky one, because if you just don’t have the player base to support it, your game can fizzle out pretty quickly. It’s happened to plenty of games over the years, and I’m sure it’ll happen to plenty more, but in a recent interview with VGC, Digital Extremes’ Steve Sinclair has shared that he thinks some studios “eject too soon” from their games. “They think the release is make or break, and it’s not,” Sinclair told VGC. “They have a financial way to be persistent, and they never do it. It comes out, doesn’t work and they throw it away.

“Isn’t that a shame when you put so many years of your life into iterating on those systems or building technology or building the start of a community, and because the operating costs are high, you get terrified when you see the numbers drop and you leave. We’ve seen this with amazing releases that I think have massive potential, and I think they eject too soon.”

I think this is potentially an unfair point to make in certain cases, games like Arkane Austin’s Redfall only exist due to a push for live-service at a studio that is known exclusively for its single-player titles, and now it’s shut down despite not really being at fault. In other cases there are examples of games finding a lot of growth through consistent updates, like No Man’s Sky and Sea of Thieves, but I personally wouldn’t take Sinclair’s word as gospel on this particular topic.

Though, Warframe itself is a good example of steadily building up an audience over the years. Just last week, Digital Extremes revealed a gameplay demo for its next big update, Warframe 1999. On top of that it showed off some brand-new gameplay for its next title Soulframe, which now has an open beta coming up too.