Warframe live event shatters concurrent user record, crashes servers

Warframe‘s player hubs, the Relays, crashed pretty firmly into the ground today as hundreds of thousands logged in for the free-to-play action MMO’s annual TennoCon event. This year’s TennoCon has in-game displays in player hubs to accompany the livestreamed presentation, and a huge flood of Warframe’s most dedicated fans have stretched the Relay servers to the breaking point. While you can get in and play the game itself, joining a Relay is harder. As in, it’s probably not going to happen.

According to SteamDB and Steamcharts over 175,000 Warframe players are online right now—which is only a fraction of people playing the game. Warframe also has a standalone client, is available on the Epic Games Store, and runs on no fewer than five major consoles. Nonetheless, the total on Steam is over 10% higher than the previous peak of just under 155,000 players for last year’s event.