For nearly a decade, the biggest summer party in London, Ont. has been for a video game

Thousands of people descended into RBC Place in London, Ont. over the weekend, many of whom were clad in all kinds of colourful futuristic armour. But it wasn’t for a comic con or a Warhammer meetup, mind you; they were heading to a global video game convention called TennoCon focused on Warframe, a multiplayer third-person action/shooter game from local developer Digital Extremes (DE).

Since 2013, the sci-fi game — which sees players teaming up as ancient “Tenno” warriors to confront different warring factions — has attracted tens of millions of players from around the world. Impressively, it’s consistently in the top 20 games on PC, and that’s to say nothing of its popularity on consoles and iOS, plus an anticipated closed Android beta coming this fall.

This is particularly notable because there really aren’t any gaming conventions like TennoCon. The largest consumer gaming events, including Gamescom in Germany, Japan’s Tokyo Game Show and the various PAX events in the U.S., feature a wide mix of games and developers from all around the world. Even the publishers who are successful enough to hold their own shows tend to feature entire portfolios, like what Blizzard’s California-based BlizzCon does with games like World of Warcraft and Diablo. And beyond that, fewer still focus on a single game, with Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIV Fan Fest — centred around a long-running MMO in a nearly 40-year-old franchise — being the most notable example.

But to bring thousands of people from the likes of Asia, Australia, Europe and the U.S. to London, Ont. for a single locally-made game? That’s the unique strength of TennoCon.

“It’s crazy,” says Pablo Alonso, design director on Warframe. “There’s a few gaming companies that have their conventions, and even the biggest ones struggle with maintaining [them] and having something new to show every year. So for us, it’s so exciting to have people come from all over the world to check out what we’re doing and see what our latest and greatest is.”

What makes TennoCon even rarer in the gaming space is the fact that the convention, like Warframe itself, has had impressive longevity. Indeed, 2025 marks Digital Extremes’ special 10th anniversary TennoCon event. Outside of two virtual shows amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the Canadian game developer has held a physical con every year since 2016 in its hometown, and it’s only continued to grow ever since. The inaugural TennoCon had about 1,000 people, and now, it’s at about 3,000 and sells out in 30 minutes. For context, that’s basically the full capacity of the 70,000 square-foot RBC Place London, Southwestern Ontario’s largest convention facility.

“I’m born and raised here in London, and it’s amazing to get people from across the whole world coming to our little town,” says DE president Sheldon Carter. “And Pablo was saying this earlier: [For] the first [TennoCon], we were just like, ‘Will anybody even come? We don’t know.’ And now, it’s this thing that celebrates Ontario, London, our game development community… The fact that there are so many talented people here in this area — that work for us, luckily — and we get to show off all their talents once a year? It’s pretty cool.”

Carter notes that it wasn’t always this way. “We started feeling like we were maybe a bit of, like, ‘Ubisoft University,’ where people were coming and they were just getting their teeth cut in the industry, and then they were going to some of the bigger companies,” admits Carter. “But as we’ve developed, the industry has matured with us, and so there’s so many people who actually come back to DE and they want to settle in London.” While DE has remote workers around the world, it’s always been based in London, with the core leadership and development team still being centred there.

Alonso, a Mexican expatriate who’s been at DE for nearly 15 years, is a perfect example of this, noting that London’s affordability and provincial and federal tax credits compared to other global development hubs in other places played a huge factor. “If I play an alternative world where we were located in New York, we don’t survive — if we had the prices of living in San Francisco or something like that,” he says. (DE has been owned by Chinese conglomerate Tencent since late 2020, but has, by all accounts, been allowed to operate independently.)

“And now, it’s about the growth — it’s being able to set down roots, and how Canada is a great country to live in,” says Carter, at which point Alonso pulls open his flannel top to fully display a red-and-white Canada shirt, prompting a laugh from everyone. “So many of our employees have come to live here, and they make this their home,” adds Carter. “And I think it’s a testament to the country and to the way of life that we have here. It’s the Canadian ecosystem that makes it sustainable and able to thrive.”

The importance of community building

What still astounds me, even after having also attended last year’s TennoCon, is just how much the fans are excited about the DE developers themselves. The gaming industry is notoriously secretive, leading most consumers to know little to nothing about how games are made or who is even making them. On top of that, many almost certainly only concern themselves with whether the game itself is good, paying little mind to all of the incredible and difficult years-long work that went into making it all happen.

But with Warframe, the fans evidently do care. There’s a clear open line of communication and trust between DE and its fans. For years, the studio has held many dozens of “Devstreams” and other presentations in which it actively updates fans and solicits feedback. Here, creative director Rebecca Ford and director of community and live ops Megan Everett are regularly joined by the likes of Alonso or even Carter or DE CEO Steve Sinclair, among other developers. It’s a level of transparency and dialogue rarely seen in the gaming industry. How often, if ever, can you point to gaming executives joining streams and having long, informative and irreverent conversations with their audience?

That unique relationship was on full display at TennoCon. As I walk the halls of RBC Place, I see numerous posters of a bearded man with a beanie that read “Have you seen this man?” That man, as it turns out, is none other than Sinclair. I would soon realize this was a running joke in the community. And sure enough, the main TennoCon panels would begin with the audience avidly cheering “Steve! Steve! Steve!” only to erupt into applause once he showed up. While it would feel unsavoury to see such excitement for an executive at most studios, especially amid a time of mass layoffs in the industry, the reverence for Sinclair makes sense.

For one, he used to be the creative director on Warframe, so his passion for game development has been understood by fans for years. It calls to mind a famous quote from the late Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata, who started as a programmer, in which he notes that his business card referred to him as an executive, but in his heart, he was a gamer. And Sinclair’s down-to-earth approach extends well beyond memes and online videos. In one instance, I happened upon him hosting an impromptu show floor meet and greet with none other than Sinclair. Despite there being dedicated times for DE meet-ups, Sinclair, among many other DE staffers, could often be seen stopping to have enthusiastic conversations with people, snapping photos, and signing memorabilia.

That said, even more front and centre than Sinclair is his Warframe creative director successor, Ford, who’s ostensibly the current face of Warframe. She was so well-liked in her previous role as former director of community and live ops that she’s affectionately dubbed “Space Mom” by the fans, and even now, as captain of the Warframe ship, she’s still known for community events around the world, like karaoke nights at PAX. It’s a humility that traces back to the origins of Warframe, as DE has been open about the fact that the studio nearly shut down in the early days of development due to financial struggles. It was only after betting literally everything on Warframe and directly connecting with its initially small player base that DE was able to slowly grow the game into what it is today.

“We’re kind of lucky because we’ve established this from many years ago, where we would show up on streams and show our work, and we can establish the fact that a game is made by people. At the end of the day, it’s not a faceless corporation making this product for you. These are people that are passionate about what they’re making. And the players see us, and they know, ‘Oh, this looks like it was designed by Pablo!’ Because they get those vibes,” says Alonso.

“It’s in our DNA, since we started Warframe, to just embrace and be okay with the fact that we’re not perfect. We’re not going to make every right decision,” adds Carter. “When we make the wrong decision, because we’re humans, people are able to be like, ‘Oh, okay, yeah, that was a mistake, and they’re gonna fix it, or they’re gonna patch it.’ And you build that relationship, and you show that and it affords you so much […] We don’t take it for granted.”

One major example of that relates to monetization. Years ago, DE introduced an in-game system that let players spend a small amount of currency to basically pull a lever and breed different coloured creatures called Kubrow. However, the team soon noticed that it basically became a slot machine as players would keep spending money in an effort to get what they wanted. Clearly, this would have been “insanely profitable,” as Carter noted at the time, but DE listened to player feedback, quickly removed the lever and refunded the original spender.

The team also does regular charity work. This includes $100,000 donations to Make-A-Wish Canada this year, as well as a partnership with the non-profit to allow Ottawa teen James Conlin, who has spina bifida, to realize his dream and become a voice actor — in this case, as the character of Ollie in Warframe 1999. Conlin returned this year with Make-A-Wish to promote the charity, sell limited edition merch (with all proceeds going to the charity), and even hold meet-and-greets with fans. And this year, DE also donated $100,000 to the Canadian Mental Health Association’s Thames Valley Addiction and Mental Health Services wing to support housing initiatives.

As Carter explains, proceeds from TennoCon tickets actually went towards these donations, thus involving the fans in that part of Warframe as well. “It helps us all feel as DE that we’re a part of something bigger, and that is very, very powerful. It’s easy, from a community standpoint — we’re humanizing ourselves. And I think as a company, it’s important to be like, ‘Hey, we’re a member of the world, a member of the London, Ontario community,’ and it’s really good that we get to give back.”

Developers who are rockstars — literally

All of these different ways of community engagement has allowed DE to foster a kind of trust that gives it the opportunity to, as Carter puts it, “experiment” and “try really wacky things” with Warframe. A key example of this was the centrepiece of last year’s show, Warframe 1999, a Y2K-themed expansion in which players have to fight an infested boy band and can even engage in dating sim mechanics. This update leaned into the fun nostalgia of the ’90s and internet culture, and was a hit among players.

At the same time, the two narrative expansions teased at this year’s TennoCon are also getting fans excited, but for completely different reasons. Later this year, The Old Peace will allow players to head to the past to visit Tau, a star system that has been teased throughout the Warframe experience but is otherwise largely unexplored territory. And in 2026, players will get to see what Tau looks like now, providing a full-circle look at this key part of the game’s expansive lore. The teasers for the Tau chapters, which feature gritty, WWI-inspired battlefields and haunting vocal tracks, are a far cry from 1999, and yet, they somehow still make sense within the same ever-growing game.

“You need it to be fresh and to have new challenges, and to always be kind of pushing your skillset and making you actually try to do something harder and harder,” says Alonso of Warframe‘s consistently varied updates. “And I think that’s what really allows us to explore this, to be like, ‘Okay, well, sure, it’s very weird to have a dating sim, but it’s not like to get the dating sim we’re taking away [anything] from players — [they] still have all the stuff they want.” He notes that the fans appreciate these kinds of swings, and in the case of the dating sim, they really liked the finished product, too.

“[It’s] the bravery to think outside the box — to not just give people what they’re asking for, but to maybe edge them a little bit with what they think they want, and then just be like, ‘No, here’s what you’re getting,'” says Amelia Tyler, who plays Eleanor, the psych-ops (psychological operations) of the central “Hex” Syndicate, in Warframe 1999. “Give the world the thing that it wasn’t even asking for, and just trust that because it’s the game that they would want to play, that other people will [also] want to.”

As the narrator of Larian Studios’ beloved Baldur’s Gate 3, Tyler knows a thing or two about working with a developer that’s cultivated its own massive and passionate fanbase. She says it’s been “quite special” to get to know the DE team better during the 1999 experience, noting that it’s not something that voice actors often get to do in their jobs. That experience has allowed her to see firsthand how DE has accomplished what it has with Warframe. 

“I think it’s integrity more than anything, and that’s easier to do if you don’t have a bunch of shareholders going, ‘Would you put some microtransactions in this, please?'” she says. “But it’s the ethos of what DE is about, and the people that they’ve gathered around, and they’re just like, ‘The game will be done when it’s done, and it’s gonna be cool. Please trust us.’ And I think over the amount of time that the game’s been out, the players have learned to trust that.”

Kevin Afghani, who plays Hex hacker Amir in Warframe 1999, says he’s also enjoyed getting to work with DE. Like Tyler, he’s no stranger to big fanbases, as he’s been the current voice of none other than Mario himself after veteran actor Charles Martinet retired from the role in 2023.

“The passion is so strong. These people are such nerds, which is so good! They really, really, really care. And that is the most consistent thing: when a job feels good and when a game feels good is when they really, really care,” says Afghani. “They won’t always do everything right — none of these companies could. But you can feel how much they care in every nook and cranny of the things that they’re releasing. That’s what it is. The passion really makes it all go.”

“[DE is a] pretty perfect sweet ground between incredibly efficient and imaginative and chill,” adds Tyler. “And you very rarely get those three things together. It’s usually struggling desperately to make one of these things work. They’ve got a really cool team.”

If all of that weren’t enough, DE celebrated the big TennoCon anniversary with one of its most audacious moves yet: playing a live Warframe concert to a sold-out crowd at London’s Canada Life Place. The fact that one game has enough popular music to sustain a concert is in itself an achievement, but what made “TennoConcert” even more unique was the fact that some DE developers actually performed. That includes Sinclair, who performed a guitar solo to open the show, and Ford, who played bass throughout the rest of it. I can’t think of any other game in which the developers themselves put on a professional concert.

“I love On-Lyne more than I should,” says Afghani of the 1999 boy band whose songs were played at TennoConcert. “I listen to that on loop!” adds Tyler, to which Afghani says, “It’s so good!”

Carter says the idea for the concert came from opening the past two TennoCons with performances from Matt Chalmers and “The Warframe Band,” noting that “so much of what makes the game magical” is its music. “That probably was the start of it — playing live music at TennoCon and people were loving it,” says Carter. He credits DE senior event manager Beth Bryson and Ford for helping to spearhead TennoConcert. “Rebecca, the multi-talented wonder that she is, said, ‘I’m gonna play bass with the band,'” he said. “She rehearsed all the time!”

“I tell this story all the time, but when I met Rebb, she introduced herself, and she was like, ‘Oh yeah, by the way, I’m the game director,’ and then she goes, ‘Oh, excuse me,’ and then she picked up a bass guitar and just started slapping the bass in front of everybody,” says Afghani of Ford’s versatility. “I was like, ‘What’s happening right now? How are you the coolest person I’ve ever met?’ That is a power play if I’ve ever seen one.”

Of course, the increasingly global reach of TennoCon and DE’s broader efforts within Warframe will no doubt draw the eye of many people. At the same time, it can be daunting to jump into a game that’s been receiving new content for well over 10 years, and Alonso says the team is very cognizant of all of that.

“It’s tough to really jump into a game that has that much history, and that’s kind of inevitable, because you’re building this thing and it keeps growing and growing and growing. So we’re always looking for ways to allow players to get there faster,” he says. He specifically teases some “wild ideas” regarding inviting ways to “speed” up new Warframe players who are invited by veterans. Carter, meanwhile, alludes to some “pretty intriguing” onboarding ideas for The Old Peace, but noted DE can’t talk about them quite yet.

“We’re always on the lookout for those ideas — I don’t think there’s ever an end,” adds Alonso. “There’s a normal saying that I just apply to Warframe: The art is never finished, only abandoned. So, if you just keep going and going and going, there’s always something that you can tweak or you can improve and keep on experimenting.” That’s been the DE way since the beginning, and given the massive success of Warframe and TennoCon, there’s clearly no sign of that stopping anytime soon.

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While Warframe is the focal point of TennoCon and DE as a whole, a smaller team within the studio has been toiling away at Soulframe, a new fantasy MMORPG. The game has been in limited testing for over a year, with a sizeable new gameplay demo being shown off at TennoCon. MobileSyrup also caught up with some of the key minds behind Soulframe. 

Update: 24/07/2025 at 9:52 a.m. ET — This story previously mentioned that DE donated to Make-A-Wish in 2024 and 2025, but it should have only said 2025. This has been corrected.