Warframe

Wow, cobwebs. That's... new.

So, I'm back. Why am I back, you might be wondering? What new thing in the sphere of games has drawn me from my seemingly eternal slumber? Something pertinent? Something timely?

Obviously not. Obviously never. But actually... simultaneously yes. Something more pertinent now than it has been for years, honestly. Given the sheer levels of economic uncertainty and the rapidly rising cost of engaging in gaming as a hobby, I've had a single question rattling around in my brain the past few months.

How free are free-to-play games, really?

See, I've been what you would call a casual PC gamer since... oh, I dunno, 1996 or so. During that entire time I have played video games on a computer primarily, and that remains true today. I've had a Steam account since Steam was just Valve stuff, I started playing games on Battle.net in about 2005, and I think I was five or six when I formed my earliest memories of playing games on the old family Atari ST. Right around the time my peers were forming memories on the SNES I was deeply internalizing the soundtrack for the ST port of L.E.D. Storm.

Holy crap I love that song.

So it's fair to say I have a decent library of games. The first game I ever owned for myself was Age of Empires, if we don't count shareware like the early levels of Descent or that copy of Chex Quest I pilfered from a box of cereal. The 90's really were beautiful in their own way. And unlike my SNES peers it was easy to keep all the games I purchased and, thanks to the effort of modders and emulation devs, keep playing them on newer and newer pieces of hardware. And that's ignoring the literal hundreds of digital games I own on services like Steam and GOG, to say nothing of the thousands of games on those services that I don't own, but could for a tiny cost relative to new games.

So when I start marinating on the possible effects of rising costs and floundering economy of the gaming hobby I recognize I do it from a position of privilege built on literal thousands of hours of unplayed games I already own and can run on hardware I already have. If you're relatively new to the hobby, or if you just don't have a ton of games, the situation is looking more and more dire as time goes on.

And it's in that spirit I return to the question at hand. How free are free-to-play games? Like actually though. Because we've all downloaded freemium games on our phones. I've made a few videos on games that offended me, personally. At best they are games that actually do require you to pay in order to have fun, and at worst they can barely be called games and they're never actually going to be fun, regardless of how much money you're willing to dump into them. 

But you still want to play games. It's still a hobby you enjoy. So what do you do if you can't afford the post-Switch 2 game pricing of 80 bucks? Give up? Stop gaming?

Hopefully no! I've been poking around some of the more high-profile free-to-play games to see just exactly how much game actually exists, and how much fun can be had, before they start insisting you open up your wallet and start bleeding.

The subject of today's investigation is, fittingly, Warframe. Arguably the most successful game in the free-to-play MMO genre, Warframe takes the form of a third-person shooter and has been sitting on this throne since it released for PC in 2013. It has since been ported to, get ready for this, PS4, Xbox One, the Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X and S,  and iOS with a port for Android in the works. It started supporting cross-platform play, one of our favorite things here at Calling All Platforms, in 2022, with cross-platform progression added in 2024. This game is over a decade old and has seen enough success during that decade to add a level of platform support typically reserved for stuff like, I don't know, the top-selling game of all time, Minecraft.

It comes as no surprise then that the game is well-liked by its community, and has spawned its fair share of imitators. Destiny, for instance.

But it's 2025 now. There's been over a decade of development and expansions here. How far do you get with minimum system specs and a desire to spend no money? What does the game even charge for? And how much fun are you going to be able to have?

Minimum System Specs and No Money

We'll start at the begin... no, Julie, DOWN! You've installed the game on a system that supports it. Here I'm going in on a PS4 Pro, because despite the fact that I've already played on my PC I kinda want to see how it handles cross-platform progress, and this console generation is still, technically, supported. And on that note I suppose it's not much of a surprise then that the PS4 runs the game just fine. Am I getting 4k out of this thing? Of course not. But then back in 2013 it was designed for 1080p anyhow. And 60fps? Eh, feels more like 30. Again, not unusual for a console game of yesteryear. It looks absolutely fine, though and honestly the only thing I'd consider a performance failing is the load times, which, you know... there's still spinning metal for storage in this PlayStation, so that's probably not the game's fault.

And cross-platform support works pretty seamlessly. You need to tie everything back to a Warframe account to enable it, but that's fairly straightforward and you can use a host of existing accounts you may already have to do so. So here I am, having spent nothing, playing the most recent version of this game on hardware I already had with really no issues. We're off to a good start.

What Costs Money

Now, given that I have to this point spent nothing, let's take a brief dive into how Warframe makes money since they're not asking me for it... yet. This is always a valuable exercise with any service that purports to be free; because money is coming in from somewhere. If you're not paying for the service up front you're either going to wind up paying for it in the back or someone else is paying for it elsewhere, and in that latter case odds are pretty good that you, the user, are in fact the product.

Unless we're talking about the open-source community. In which case the money is coming from whatever day job the volunteers are working, and you really ought to be feeling pretty grateful for their donations.

And in the case of Warframe it seems the main money maker is... Warframes. The uh... psychological mech suits that you... pilot? in the game itself. This does, of course, open the game up to criticisms of "pay to win", but let's step back a bit. First off, many of the upgrades they sell in the shop are purely cosmetic. Will you look like a scrub if you don't splash out for premium cosmetics? Probably yes. But that doesn't necessarily mean you'll play like one. I've only got about a dozen hours under my belt at this point so of course this could change in the very late stages of the game, but so far it looks to me like the three default Warframes, one of which you select when you create your first character, are perfectly serviceable and can be upgraded over time by virtue of doing nothing but playing the game into absolutely reasonable late-game toolsets. Are your options more limited if you don't buy any of the premium Warframes or weapons? Somewhat, yes. But are they worse? So far it doesn't look that way to me.

And as far as I can tell this is, in fact, the only way Warframe is making money, by selling you content that is nice to have, but not strictly necessary to play and progress in the game. It also seems like, assuming I'm not missing something here, the vast, vast majority of this stuff can also be bought with currency you earn in-game. You can spend real money for some of it, as well as spending money on the in-game credits if you want, but as far as I can tell the only stuff in here that can only be bought with actual money are these cosmetic packs for the Warframes that have absolutely no gameplay effects. All this means that if you want to grind like a crazy person you can unlock the premium equipment without paying at all, given enough free time. Which I don't have, so I'll be unlocking exactly none of this stuff. But thanks, Warframe, I appreciate the offer.

And is it possible that the PvP arena, known as the Conclave I guess, requires you to have some of these premium upgrades in order to be competitive? Well, I suppose anything's possible. But, again as a noob here who has actual negative levels of desire to play PvP in a game like this so get ready to heap on that salt, I kinda doubt it. Honestly it seems like you can upgrade these basic Warframes to pretty crazy levels just by playing the game and so long as you're content with their abilities, the PvP experience will probably come down more to individual skill level than anything else. Besides, if you're worried about PvP skewing in favor of people who have dumped cash into the game because you keep getting bodied by elaborately decked out players in PvP matches, keep in mind that odds are high the people who have dumped cash into the game have also been playing it for close to a decade across two console generations and likely have racked up more hours in-game during that time than they have sleeping. Probably.

In other words, git guud scrub. 

Are You Entertained?

Short answer? Yeah. The gameplay here is really solid. Missions don't feel particularly special, at least in what I've played of the game so far, and generally you're doing a lot of variations on "run down a bunch of halls massacring waves of faceless minions". Which would really suck in a Baldur's Gate game, but the actual point of this third-person action game is the action and movement, which feels super good. And of course you have the co-op fireteam aspect of the gameplay, which if you can get in some time with your friends will certainly help mitigate the lack of variety in the missions themselves. And while of course I think it's a strike against a game to require friends to liven things up, it's a lot less of an issue here because of how the game costs... nothing.

And hey, I wouldn't be the video-game story guy if I didn't at least mention the lore on display here. Of course the combat and looting gameplay loop is going to be the main draw here, but there is a surprising depth to the world Warframe takes place in. It remains to be seen how much of that depth is revealed naturally through gameplay, as opposed to stuff you read in item descriptions or on wikis while you're researching your loot, but there's plenty for them to work with and I can, at least, confirm the team building the game care about it enough to commission these absolute bangers of diagetic songs to sprinkle into the game here and there.

And unlike some other free-to-play games (lookin at you here, Destiny), jumping in as a new player in 2025 feels like you're starting at the beginning of the game. I can't say for sure that this was, in fact, what the game was like when it was new, but as a newcomer I feel like I'm getting the full experience, whereas coming fresh into Destiny 2 right now feels like you're being dropped right into the middle of a narrative you can read about, but which you'll never be able to fully experience. So that's another win for Warframe over its competitors regardless of whether you've got a bunch of friends to play with.

And nothing about the experience being free-to-play feels impactful with regards to my overall enjoyment of the movement, combat, or setting, so if you like fast-moving third-person hack-and-slash or gunplay, not only do I think you'd enjoy this game, but I honestly think you'd be able to do so absolutely free of charge on hardware that is frankly kinda archaic. Like at this point Sony is talking about a PS6, and I'm over here on a PS4 Pro having a grand time. Or, well, as grand a time as I can ever have using a controller to shoot guns. Honestly kinda feels like trying to roast a hotdog over a birthday candle whilst getting repeatedly kicked in the nards by a kangaroo. So if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna move back to my PC.