Warframe dev calls Destiny 2's shutdown 'horrible news' and fears losing control of its own ending

At TennoCon 2026 this weekend, Warframe creative director Rebecca Ford spoke candidly about the sudden death of Destiny 2 — and what it means for any live-service studio that could face the same fate.

Ford told GamesRadar that the collapse of Destiny 2 is "horrible news, because it shows that even if you care so much, the business side of this industry always gets the last remark." She went further: "That's not the first time it's happened, and it'll happen again, where the business aspect of the video game economy makes the decision for you, and it is existentially threatening at every level, because the idea that we aren't in charge of our own goodbye is something I wake up thinking about every single day." Warframe live ops lead Megan Everett echoed that sentiment in a separate Eurogamer interview last month, saying no one at Digital Extremes is celebrating what happened to Destiny and its players — and that having a strong competitor is actually a sign of a healthy genre.

Destiny 2's shutdown this summer has been anything but graceful. Work on a planned expansion was redirected into a final update that left major story threads unresolved, and the game will now sit frozen in its current state for as long as Bungie keeps the servers running — a rough ending for a multiplayer shooter that once defined the genre. Warframe, which launched a year before Destiny 2 in 2013, spent years in its rival's shadow but has outlasted it. Digital Extremes is majority-owned by Leyou, itself acquired by Tencent, so the studio is not fully independent — but it has maintained creative control over Warframe through that structure. The studio has had its own stumbles, most notably picking up Airship Syndicate's MMO Wayfinder as a publishing project in 2023 before dropping it later that same year.

With Destiny 2 gone, Warframe heads into its next chapter as the dominant live-service shooter in the space, and Digital Extremes is preparing to launch a fantasy MMO set in the same universe. Ford's comments make clear the studio is aware of how quickly fortunes can change — and is determined not to let the business side write Warframe's final chapter.