Warframe, the free-to-play online action game developed by Digital Extremes, came up twice as I asked MMO industry veterans what the future of Western MMOs looked like.
Just yesterday, I published an interview with Jack Emmert, who's returning as CEO of Cryptic Studios (he previously held the role from 2011 to 2015, when he left after 15 years at the company). As part of our conversation, I picked up his mind on the difficulties faced by Western developers looking to make a new game in the genre, and Emmert pointed out an example to follow: Warframe.
It would be difficult for anybody to go to a Western publisher and ask for money to develop an MMORPG. The track record with Western publishers and MMORPGs is not very good for a lot of reasons. However, I think there's a lot of opportunity to launch a game that isn't necessarily an MMO at the start, but grows into something. A model like Warframe is a really good one; it is vastly bigger than it ever was when it first launched. That is a direction many games could go. A multiplayer story-based RPG could add an open-world component through an update or expansion. Instead of a hundred-million-dollar investment all upfront, you're making a series of $20 million bets so that at the end of five to seven years you have that big MMO, having paid for it and grown the community along the way.
I would not be surprised to see someone bootstrap a very small product, get some initial success, and continue to invest in it. Subnautica was like that, too. I think that's where you're going to see the new MMOs. To MMO fans, I'd say be patient; if you support a product and love it, just keep supporting it. It'll get there.
Anyone familiar with Warframe knows that the game that launched in March 2013 on PC was quite barebones. However, over time and with an ear constantly tuned to the community's feedback, Digital Extremes expertly introduced new content and features on a regular basis, making it one of the best examples of a live service game in the whole industry and securing an extremely loyal fanbase.
In 2026, Warframe is a whole different beast. It has a ton of content and activities to satisfy different playstyles, and it has also successfully expanded across all available platforms (the final one, Android, will get the game on February 18 after a couple of months of Closed Beta testing). Of course, someone could argue that Warframe is not quite an MMO in the traditional sense. Even so, the larger point holds: start with a solid 'minimum viable product' and build on it over time. The example is doubly fitting because Digital Extremes did everything on its own, developing and self-publishing the game, which is what a developer would have to do in the current absence of investments for MMO games.
Anyway, Emmert was not the only MMO veteran to point out Warframe to me when I inquired about the state of the genre in Western countries. In an interview I published last month, Greg Street (former World of Warcraft and League of Legends designer) told me:
The basic problem is that it's hard to start small with an MMO. You have to commit to a lot of systems and content to make it work. There are some notable exceptions, like Warframe, which started small and grew into an MMO.
Street and Emmert know each other quite well, so it's possible they spoke about this before and found they shared the same viewpoint. Their insight is particularly interesting because they both bashed their heads against the problems faced when making a new MMO game in the West: their companies, Jackalyptic and Fantastic Pixel Castle, were working on two new MMO games, one based on Warhammer and another on a new fantasy IP.
In both cases, they were funded by NetEase, which, however, changed its mind a couple of years later and closed both studios down. This experience likely contributed to their conviction that a small game, like Warframe when it launched, can eventually become much larger and should serve as a model for future titles that do not have the budget to start big.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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