Leyou Tech Annual Result 2019: Warfarme Revenue -12.2%YoY, Registered Users +19.5%YoY; Work-For-Hire Business +22.4%YoY

[rocket]

Source & Full Report Here: http://northeurope.blob.euroland.co...ments/1203571/HKEX-EPS_20200325_9203152-0.PDF

As indicated in their Annual Result for the year 2019 announcement, while Warframe's players base recorded an increase of 19.5% to 57.5mil in registered account, their revenue had actually gone down by 12.2%. Leyou indicated in the report attributing the decrease in revenue to 1) "large-scale AAA games with themes and gameplay similar to Warframe were launched.", 2) " With the next-generation consoles to be released by the end of 2020, the number of new console players reduced accordingly.", 3) "due to the size and scale of the development work related to Empyrean, a milestone content update for Warframe, the update cadence was temporarily affected and less new game content was released during the reporting period."

Unless someone can tell me otherwise, seeing your game's sign up rating going up and revenue actually going down is never a good sign. As much as the game's Spacemom PR like using "Registered Loser Users" as marketing, clearly it meant very little from how profitable the game actually is. IMO, while it is troubling for the dev, it is equally troubling for the player base that are sticking with the game since if the increase of "new blood" does not really help move the revenue needle forward, monetization and grind mechanics may grew more aggressive to try and move the needle from that end of the spectrum.

DE need to come up with something good and quick. If 2019 is not a kind year for them, 2020 will only be worst.

 

[UnluckyKate]

Long time warframe player here : been there since close beta, 7 years playing the game.

This year been weird for warframe. they told us they didn't want to make " isolated " or " island " of content that have very to little impact besides itself, like they did the last two years with both open world zone with their hub and economy and activity...

But the last 6 months have been... Pretty terrible for the game : first they took a lot of devtime for Empyrean and its more isolated content than anything they ever did. It was locked behind a huge grind wall (now fixed, halved by two) but still nothing to do with it beside the event that just came two days ago that tie with Railjack mode that came early december. So they launched and left it for 4 months to itself, after already few months of content drough to bring Empyrean to fruition.

They also told us they wanted to scale back on launching content for the sake of it and focus and improving, revamping, revisiting and fixing in game content before going to crazy on new stuff and they did do that. They re balanced all weapons (huge buff to everything to noramlise a lot of stats), damage and melee systems and its been pretty amazing as Warframe as a near infinite theorycrafting with its damage and mods system. So much room for experimention and build diversity and now pretty much any melee weapon is viable to end game content.

But yes, content wise, its but very miss and miss or at least missed opportunities. Warframe is not new at introducing new game modes or systems and basically forgetting about it (Archwings, clan wars, etc... ) but Empyrean, while still fresh, still feel VERY basic and isolated. They need to spend a lot of resources to expand on it to make it worth while but it will require so much effort to integrate it back into the main core systems that it might be too much.

that being said, its coming from a player who has everything in the game. Seen everything, done everything got everything. I'm not complaining about the drought, and I recommend EVERYONE to try Warframe its the best Free 2 play game out there, its not ripping you off, its generous, the game is amazing, expanding and the team behind it super suportive and transparent, fixing the game thrice a day when a big update drops with tons of bugs etc... Its the best exemple of Free 2 play and gaas I can think off.

 

[VariantX]

It's more like WF lacks focus. Game wants to be everything but it's success wasn't made by trying to be all things to all people. The mega large updates are getting in the way of them being able to make fun content for the game. Lots of the new content that's been put into the game as of late seems way more engagement driven than fun driven.

 

[WellbornWarrior]

It feels kinda wrong to paint the game as declining when it's still an absolute juggernaut on the same level as Fortnite, but yeah, it being unfocused was the reason I personally only played it on and off over the years.

They really need to step back and rearrange the whole game so every isolated thing is tied together and the numerous different grinds need to be reduced by a large margin.

 

[VariantX]

It feels kinda wrong to paint the game as declining when it's still an absolute juggernaut on the same level as Fortnite, but yeah, it being unfocused was the reason I personally only played it on and off over the years.

They really need to step back and rearrange the whole game so every isolated thing is tied together and the numerous different grinds need to be reduced by a large margin.

Click to shrink...

The grinds were always there, but the difference from in the past than now is that in the past, focusing on one thing still allowed you to make progress in another area even though it wasn't something you were exclusively focusing on. The syndicate system is the prime example of this. If you wanted to focus on syndicate rep, you got the option of being able to do syndicate missions that gave you a decent amount as a reward and syndicate medallions to collect in those missions for to be exchanged for even more rep. This is in addition to the Max rep you can gain with just playing the game. So you could hit your cap playing and doing other things like ESO, and if you wanted more rep that day, you still had the option of doing the syndicate missions. Now everything is an island, If you're working on something, in this place, you progress nowhere else. And its a growing sentiment that these are the only type of grinds/progression DE has been adding as of late. They've essentially killed off passive progression.