Free Loot For Record-Breaking Stream Viewership? Well Played, 'Warframe'

Digital Extremes

I was a bit puzzled to see Warframe dominating Twitch this weekend, boasting 400,000+ views, putting it on top of the most-watched list ahead of the likes of even Fortnite.

Yes, it was the broadcast from Tennocon ’18, the Warframe convention in which new gameplay elements and additions are revealed, but even still, those numbers seemed rather excessive for the game. This is an event that last year, for instance, boasted just 33,000 concurrent viewers compared to this year’s 414,000. The game hasn’t seen a thousand percent increase in popularity in a year, so how did they do this magic trick?

That would be something rather clever, in fact. The concept of Twitch Prime loot is not very new at this point. Link your Prime account to whatever game you’re playing, get free stuff. But Warframe took this a step further.

In order to boost stream viewership, they had players like their Twitch accounts to Warframe, then so long as they watch at least 30 minutes of the Tennocon stream, they would be awarded a free frame, Ash Prime (seen above).

Digital Extremes

I have seen many people saying that this is “bribery” and “view inflation” and “doesn’t count.”

I say it’s a genius bit of marketing using modern streaming to its fullest extent as promotion both for current and potential players.

This gets current players involved, both hardcore and casual, to ensure they get that frame
Lapsed players may be attracted to come back to the game if they show up for the frame and witness the cool stuff being added (and there was a lot of cool stuff this year)
Normal Twitch viewers may see Warframe’s “boosted” numbers sitting on top of Twitch and stop by the stream to check it out. They may learn about a game they’ve never played, and be shocked to learn that the looter is actually free, unlike rivals like Destiny, Diablo and The Division.

It’s a win-win-win, as Michael Scott would say. Current players gets free stuff, Digital Extremes gets massive viewership and hype, non-players get introduced to game they might never have checked out otherwise.

This really was a brilliant move, and I would expect more games to follow suit. I’m not sure if this is the first time we’ve ever seen “stream viewership bribery,” but it’s the most prominent example I can think of, if nothing else. Like I would love to see Destiny blow up its viewership numbers for DLC reveals by offering some sort of freebie to players watching (though perhaps Destiny is the wrong example since the community tends to get up in arms about everything, myself included). Regardless, I think there’s a lot of potential in this idea, and Digital Extremes was very smart to set this up this way. Good on them, and I hope Warframe sees a fresh flood of players as a result.

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