Warframe is a free-to-play action role-playing third-person shooter multiplayer online game developed and published by Digital Extremes. First released for Windows in March 2013, it was later ported to PlayStation 4 in November 2013, Xbox One in September 2014, Nintendo Switch in November 2018, PlayStation 5 in November 2020, Xbox Series X/S in April 2021, iOS in February 2024, Android in Canada on February 11, 2026 followed by a global release on February 18, 2026, and was released on Nintendo Switch 2 on March 25, 2026. Support for cross-platform play was released in 2022. Cross-platform save began in December 2023, rolling out in waves to different groups of players before becoming fully available to all players in January 2024.
In Warframe, a player controls a member of the Tenno, a caste of ancient warriors who have awoken from centuries of suspended animation far into Earth's future to find themselves at war with different factions in the Origin System. The Tenno use biomechanical combat units called Warframes, along with a variety of weapons and abilities, to complete missions. While many of the game's missions use procedurally generated levels, it also includes large open world areas similar to other massively multiplayer online games, as well as some story-specific missions with fixed level design. The game includes elements of shooting and melee games, parkour, and role-playing to allow players to advance their Tenno with improved gear. The game features both player versus environment and player versus player elements. It is supported by microtransactions, allowing players to purchase in-game items with money, while also offering the option to earn them at no cost through grinding.
The concept for Warframe originated in 2000 when Digital Extremes began work on a new game titled Dark Sector. At the time, the company had been successful in supporting other developers and publishers but wanted to develop its own game in-house. Dark Sector suffered several delays and was eventually released in 2008, incorporating some of the initial framework but differing significantly from the original plan. By 2012, in the wake of the success of free-to-play games, the developers took their earlier Dark Sector ideas and art assets and incorporated them into a new project, their self-published Warframe.
Initially, the growth of Warframe was slow, hindered by moderate critical reviews and low player counts. However, since its release, the game has experienced significant growth. It is one of Digital Extremes' most successful titles, reaching nearly 50 million registered players by 2019.
Plot Warframe is set in a far future version of the Solar System, now known as the Origin System. At the start of the game players are given control of members of the Tenno, warriors who have awoken from a millennia-long cryosleep on Earth by a woman called the Lotus, who acts as a guide for the player. They join an interplanetary war between the Grineer, a violent war-driven matriarchal race of militarized human clones; the Corpus, a cult-like megacorporation dedicated to profit; the Infested, disfigured victims of a zombie-like virus; the Sentients, a race of self-replicating machines made by a long-dead transhuman race known as the Orokin; and the Corrupted, brainwashed variants of the previous three factions' units defending ancient Orokin towers.
All of the factions encountered in the game, including the Tenno, were created by or are splinter groups of the old Orokin Empire, an ancient fallen civilization and former reigning power in the Origin System. Although virtually all of them are long dead by the time of the Tenno's awakening, their lingering presence can still be felt throughout the Origin System. Before their fall, the Orokin had realized the Origin System was becoming dangerously depleted of resources, and their solution to keep their empire alive was to colonize new star systems. The Orokin sent out colony ships through the Void, a trans-dimensional space that enabled faster than light travel between stellar systems. They had also sent out the Sentients beforehand, to arrive in the Tau system first, and terraform it, so the colonists would arrive to garden worlds, capable of supporting human life. None of these residential ships returned, and those they had loaded with Sentients returned with the Sentients now deciding to wipe out the Orokin, leading to the Old War, the creation of the Tenno, and the collapse of the Empire.
The player discovers that the Lotus is a Sentient known as Natah, rebelling against her own kind to protect the Tenno, desiring to have surrogate children after losing her ability to procreate. The Lotus' father, Hunhow, sends an assassin called the Stalker to Lua (the remains of Earth's Moon), which the Lotus had hidden in the Void, to find its secret. The Lotus dispatches the Tenno to stop the Stalker, arriving too late as the Stalker unveils the entity that the Lotus had protected: a human child known as the Operator, who is the real Tenno controlling the Warframes through the course of the game. The Operator is one of several Tenno children that survived the passage of the Zariman Ten Zero colony ship through the Void; the adults having all gone mad from its travel. When the ship returned to the Orokin Empire, the children had all been put to sleep for thousands of years, outlasting the fall of the Empire, to be found by the Lotus and becoming the Tenno (Tenno short for the "Ten Zero" of the ship's name). The power of the Void gave these children the power to control Warframes.
Throughout various updates, various quests have been released after the Second Dream that elaborates on the story. "The War Within" quest introduced the Grineer Queens, rulers of the Grineer, and their asteroid-based Kuva Fortress, also giving the Operator the ability to act fully on their own as another playable entity, rather than a single-use attack. Quests afterward would introduce figures such as "The Man In The Wall," a mysterious entity, presumably from the Void, who takes on the visage of whoever sees them, most often as the playable Operator, and Ballas, one of the last living Orokin, responsible for creating the Warframes.
Gameplay Warframe is an online action game that includes elements of shooters, RPGs, and stealth games.
The player starts with a silent protagonist in the form of an anthropomorphic biomechanical combat unit called a Warframe, possessing supernatural agility and special abilities, a selection of weapons (primary, secondary, and melee) and a space ship called an Orbiter. The Orbiter is supported by a Cephalon, a type of artificial intelligence created from the minds of living people. The Cephalon in the player's Orbiter is named Ordis, and refers to the player as Operator. The player's primary goal from this point is to explore the Origin System. Later in the course of the game, the player unlocks the ability to gain direct control of the Operator, the Tenno's true physical form. The Operator can physically manifest themselves in the environment by projecting out of the Warframe, and disappear by resuming control of it through a telekinetic process called Transference. The Operator also possesses weapons and abilities of their own. After that, the Operator can use Transference to control a larger, purely mechanical combat unit called a Necramech, the technological precursor to the Warframes. Players can engage in aerial or space-bound combat using an auxiliary combat platform called Archwing, mounted on a Warframe, which comes with a unique set of abilities. Archguns are heavy weapons designed for Archwings and Necramechs, but can be adapted for Warframe use. Late in 2019, an update to the game allowed players to pilot and manage a spacefaring gunship called the Railjack, which is deployed in combat, unlike the Orbiter. Railjack was designed as a co-op experience with up to four people working together, performing different tasks to keep the ship operational while destroying enemy ships and completing objectives. A Railjack-focused update was released in 2021, which brought expanded content and a new skill tree system aimed at making solo play more accessible.
Through the Orbiter's console, the player can select any of the missions available to them. To progress through the Solar System, players must complete mission nodes on each planet to reach Junctions, and use these Junctions to travel to other planets. Other missions rotate over time as part of the game's living universe; these can include missions with special rewards and community challenges to allow all players to reap benefits if they are successfully met. High-difficulty daily and weekly challenges offer rare rewards. Aboard the Orbiter, the player can manage their arsenal of equipment, customize their Warframes and weapons, craft new equipment, and access the in-game marketplace. Missions can be played alone or with up to four players in a player versus environment cooperative manner, and are generally played on procedurally generated maps. Missions have various objectives, such as defeating a certain number of enemies (Exterminate), stealing data from terminals without raising enemy alarms (Spy), rescuing and escorting prisoners (Rescue), or defending points on the map for set periods (Defense). Later updates have added three large open-field environments where the player can accept bounties composed of several missions in succession; and a fourth open-field environment named Duviri, where the player must take control of the Operator's alternate-timeline self, the Drifter, and complete a series of objectives before slaying an ancient mechanical beast known as an Orowyrm.
Players can use their weapons, abilities, and several parkour maneuvers to navigate through the area and defeat enemies within the mission. Upon losing all health, a player becomes downed; an ally may revive them, or a player may revive themselves a limited number of times per mission. Once the mission is complete, players are rewarded with in-game items, as well as in-game currency and items picked up while exploring the map; failure to complete a mission causes these rewards to be lost. In addition to cooperative missions, the game includes player versus player (PvP) content through the multiplayer Conclave, which also rewards the player for placing highly in such matches.