Warframe devs lay off publishing team, no longer involved with Wayfinder

Digital Extremes, the developer of Warframe, has laid off more than 30 people and will "cease operations" of its publishing team. As such, Digital Extremes have transferred full ownership of recently launched free-to-play RPG Wayfinder to developers Airship Syndicate and will no longer have any involvement in its operation.

"We have made the very difficult decision to cease operations of our External Projects division - which has seen us say goodbye to over 30 valued colleagues," said a company statement shared via LinkedIn. "Our belief is for us to achieve our goals for Warframe and eventually Soulframe, we need to be able to rally 100% behind in-house products and development."

"We thank Digital Extremes for helping jumpstart Wayfinder and getting us to this point in our journey," said developers Airship Syndicate in a post via X. "Airship Syndicate owns the Wayfinder IP, and we have no plans to stop developing the game now. We look forward to continuing to grow the game alongside our players as we take on operations."

Wayfinder launched earlier this year to mostly negative reviews on Steam, with criticism focused on monetisation and missing founders' rewards for those who paid to access the game. At the time, Airship Syndicate acknowledged that the situation "sucked". "We apologize," Digital Extremes wrote in a statement. "We know players have high expectations of [Digital Extremes]’s infrastructure to deliver in moments like this, and in this instance we, as the publisher, fell short."

Ed thought that Wayfinder had promise when he played earlier this year, but also worried about its ability to standout in a crowded post-Destiny world. At the time of writing it has a little more than 700 concurrent players on Steam.