The game that inspired Warframe is free on Steam until Saturday

News
By published

Dark Sector laid the groundwork for what would eventually become one of today's biggest and most enduring multiplayer shooters.

The multiplayer third-person shooter Warframe has been around for more than a decade, and by any measure it's a major success. It's sometimes compared to Destiny, but its roots actually go back much further, to a third-person shooter called Dark Sector that was announced in 2000 and eventually released in 2008. If you missed it back then, you can pick it up right now for free on Steam.

Digital Extremes is making Dark Sector free—for keeps—for no particular reason that I can detect except that it's a holiday, also Black Friday, and that it wants to remind everyone about the big Warframe: 1999 update that's coming out in December. It promises to be the game's "wildest update yet," taking players out of Warframe's far-future setting and dropping them into the end of an alternate 20th century, complete with '90s instant messenger clients, motorcycle stunts, an Infested space mutant boy band, and even—thanks to Baldur's Gate 3—Warframe's first-ever romance system.

Andy Chalk
Andy Chalk
US News Lead

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.