PR Change For Warframe Adds More Evidence To Support “Pay-To-Win” Acquisition

The community of the critically acclaimed free-to-play third-person action MMO, Warframe, are still in shock after information was found suggesting that Perfect World Entertainment and Digital Extremes were at the later stages of an acquisition. Perfect World Entertainment are one of the most successful free-to-play publishers in the market today but that success has come with a price as many of the MMO community have branded their titles with the infamous pay-to-win banner, rewarding players with excessive advantages in-game for premium purchases.

Although I don't personally feel all of PWE's titles deserve that banner, I cannot defend those that do deserve it. Warframe's success is one that cannot be denied following a huge surge in its PC community before a hugely successful PlayStation 4 release that has seen the game occupy the highest slots of the popularity leaderboards on Sony's next-generation platform.

Details on the acquisition are scarce. Neither Perfect World Entertainment or Digital Extremes have offered any additional comments outside of the information below:

"You may have read something about the business development side of Digital Extremes and it may have you concerned," Digital Extremes Video Game Director Steve Sinclair said on the game's forums. "For legal reasons, we can't disclose specifics but if you know the history of Warframe you'd know that we are intent on having Warframe's design remain in the hands of Digital Extremes. Yes, opportunities will arise for us but the game itself is and will remain a labor of love."

Despite the tidbit of information in the statement, one particular area is of more importance, most notably this part of the entry - "we are intent on having Warframe's design remain in the hands of Digital Extremes". If this proves true Digital Extremes will continue to maintain the development rights for Warframe, leaving Perfect World Entertainment to deal with the other aspects of marketing and publishing.

A new press release was issued today providing information on the latest PlayStation 4 update. However, this did not come from the expected outlet as Warframe is now using an entirely different company to deliver its press releases to its ever-growing audience. However, the new PR company does not have big ties with Perfect World Entertainment which begs other questions. Why the change in PR? If anything we would expect a change to PWE's regular PR channels.

What do you think? Will Perfect World Entertainment and Digital Extremes go forward with the acquisition?