Warframe

Warframe is Digital ExtremesPublisherDigital ExtremesDigital Extremes is the Canadian studio behind Warframe, the long-running free-to-play co-op looter-shooter it has self-published since 2013. Majority-owned by Tencent, through Leyou, since 2020. Warframe ships no kernel anti-cheat, leaning on server authority and economy tracking instead.1 game in this family →' free-to-play co-op action game, released in 2013 and still updated more than a decade later. Players control Tenno, agile space ninjas, through fast movement-driven missions that are primarily cooperative player-versus-environment. It runs on the studio's own Evolution EngineEngineEvolution Engine (Digital Extremes)The Evolution Engine is Digital Extremes' proprietary in-house engine, built and maintained for Warframe since 2013. It is not licensed externally, which is why it is its own family in this catalog.1 game in this family →, and Digital Extremes has been majority-owned by Tencent, through Leyou, since 2020.

Warframe is one of the lighter installs among major online games: no kernel driver loads to play it. The legitimate process is Warframe.x64.exe. Enforcement leans on server authority and account action rather than a resident anti-cheat watching your PC, so the practical risk is to your account if you trade for illicit currency, not a driver on your system. If you mostly play the cooperative content, which is most of the game, the PvP mode is something you opt into rather than the default.

Warframe asks very little of your system: it installs no kernel-mode anti-cheat. The honest nuance is that it is not entirely without client-side checks, since the user agreement permits the client to look at system memory for unauthorized programs, but that is user-mode, not a kernel driver. Enforcement is mostly server-authoritative: because the game is online and the server validates what you earn, impossible behavior gets flagged by the server and handled with manual review and account bans. The main Windows process is Warframe.x64.exe. The competitive PvP mode, Conclave, is a small and optional part of the game, which is part of why an invasive anti-cheat was never needed.

Digital Extremes has one of the stronger community reputations in live-service gaming, built on a long record of public communication about its development. Its most distinctive enforcement surface is the economy: in 2018 it cracked down on illicit sellers of the premium currency, tracking the currency's movement and penalizing accounts that traded with banned sellers, including some buyers who said they did not know the currency was tainted. That is the trade-off of a server-authoritative game without a kernel anti-cheat: enforcement happens where the server can see it, in what you do and trade, rather than in a driver watching your machine. Sources include PC Gamer, Game Informer, and Massively Overpowered.