The president of the developer studio behind Warframe talks about the competition with Destiny, its downfall, and the studio’s own situation.
What happened in 2014: Sheldon Carter, the president of Digital Extremes, the developer studio behind Warframe, spoke in an interview with Business Insider about the current state of the studio as well as the previous competition with Destiny.
Carter explained that the release of Destiny in 2014 caused problems for Digital Extremes and the Warframe, which had been released 18 months earlier: “Destiny 1 really hit us hard when it came out. It’s a looter-shooter with a ton of marketing and truly great developers on the team. Destiny 2 as well.”
He then elaborated that he and his studio initially wanted to counter it deliberately, but later it was to come differently: “For a while, we considered [Destiny] as competition and wanted to aggressively compete with what they were doing. But over time, developers from their team came to our team. New people who started with us learned what looter-shooters are because they invested thousands of hours in Destiny.”
According to Carter, the final update for Destiny 2 announced by Bungie in May led to a gloomy mood in his team: “There was a sense of mourning in our studio with this news. The mood was quite downcast.” He himself was sad that it was over for the competitor.
While Destiny dies, Warframe continues to grow
This is currently happening with Warframe: Later in the interview, Carter reports that part of the studio feared about 5 years ago that Digital Extremes would soon have to start a new project because Warframe was at its peak. Subsequently, the development of Soulframe began, and Digital Extremes changed the development and continuation of Warframe.
However, some time later it became evident that Warframe was not yet at its peak at that time. The looter-shooter recorded “massive growth” afterward, with the past two years likely bringing the greatest growth in the history of the game.
This is how the situations of Warframe and Destiny differ: Destiny 2 is practically dead. While player numbers surged with the final update in June and the community fought back one last time, no successor is currently planned, and Bungie has again laid off a lot of employees.
Warframe, on the other hand, continues to have strong and stable player numbers and, with the release of Warframe Mobile just a few months ago, has opened up a new platform.
Additionally, Digital Extremes announced the next major update for the looter-shooter at TennoCon 2026 in July. This will take players to Tau for the first time, where there will be a new star map. You can read more about it in this article: Warframe brings a new star system that fans have been hyped about for over 8 years – Tells a detective story in cyberpunk noir style
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