Tenno Con is essentially a convention celebrating Warframe and Digital Extremes’ new IP, Soulframe. When you read that base level one-liner, it can be easy to write it off as something small, and well, you’d be wrong. In the current environment, where every worse person you know just won’t stop highlighting the reason that people don’t play multiplayer games, an event like Tenno Con is a good reminder of what gaming is actually about.
We tend to joke about “the gamers TM,” but the reality is that this hobby is something that pulls people together, gives something to celebrate, and something to hold onto when everything is hard. With 3,000 people in attendance at this year’s Tenno Con, taking up three areas in London, Ontario’s City Centre, it was the largest the convention has ever been.
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I have only ever dabbled in Warframe. I don’t know much about the lore, but I’ve played enough to recognize DE’s unique visual style. But when you’re in a sea of people who are moved by it all, you start to fall in love with it yourself. I never felt out of place; I felt welcomed, and while it wasn’t my own home, it felt like visiting a friend.
Tenno Con 2025 celebrates 10 years of the convention and the community that built it.
Throughout the weekend, I spoke with various attendees outside the TennoConcert venue, in the con photo areas, and even in the hotel lobby. I spoke with attendees from China, Japan, France, and even Serbia. Whether they were a married couple who met in-game, a Tenno who had been playing since launch, or newcomers into the community, they all had variations of the same story.
Warframe connected them to people during both hard times and good times, keeping them grounded during the COVID pandemic and making them feel welcomed when nowhere else did. That’s why gaming is important, and we lose sight of that.
During the Tenno Con 2025 keynote, delivered by Warframe Creative Director Rebb Ford and Community Director Megan Everett, the duo also showcased how the Warframe community and Digital Extremes have been working to give back to the people around them. Tenno Con isn’t a moment for the studio to make money, and that was apparent right from the start.
Tenno Con has two charity partners this year, Make-A-Wish and the Canadian Mental Health Association’s Thames Valley Addiction and Mental Health Services. The former, featured on the show floor, has already granted one wish to James Conlin. He wanted to be a famous voice actor. So, the studio worked with him and had him voice a character named Ollie last year. Conlin returned to Tenno Con this year to a crowd chanting his character’s name. He signed autographs at the Make-A-Wish booth, and it is impossible not to be moved by that.
Digital Extremes has used TennoCon to give back to more than just their players.
By the same token, Digital Extremes also chose a local charity. Too often, we see conventions come into towns and take from them. This was most apparent at this year’s Summer Game Fest, happening in the section of Los Angeles that experienced ICE raids. Sure, they contribute to the economy, but they don’t build up a city with the intention that Digital Extremes has done.
If you’re unfamiliar, the Canadian Mental Health Association Thames Valley Addiction and Mental Health Services is an integrated mental health and addiction agency providing community-based supports and services across Elgin, Middlesex, Oxford, and South Huron Counties. With a $100,000 donation to the organization, the studio contributed to the construction of two homes for two families.
Like almost every city in North America, homelessness and mental health support are issues in London. And as their HQ city, Digital Extreme made the intentional decision to give back. To build their city and ensure that Tenno Con left it better than before it was held.
When I say Tenno Con is about community, I mean that in the largest and smallest sense of the world. DE has created an event and environment that looks to invigorate the city of London as much as it does the players who traveled from across the world to attend it.
Video Games are about the people who make them and play them, and that’s the core takeaway from Tenno Con 2025.
Tenno Con isn’t about a video game; it’s the people. It’s about the developers who have spent their careers crafting an expansive world that continues to grow, the players who keep it going, the voice talent that brings the characters to life, and the community they have all built together. I’ve been to a lot of conventions, and while they’re all about community, there’s something viscerally different about being united around one game that feels like walking into a new world.
I experienced this last year at EverQuest’s Fippy Fest, and now I’m experiencing it again at Tenno Con. For me, gaming has always been about playing with other people. It’s a way to connect and bond with people you would never meet otherwise, whether it be due to location, language, or any other number of differences.
People make games, people play games, and that’s it’s all about. To quote Nicole Kidman’s AMC commercial, “We come to this place for magic,” and that place is gaming. When we embrace communities like the one that has developed around Warframe, we see our best selves.
This may not be the Tenno Con recap you expected to read, but the reality is that Tenno Con’s 10-Year Celebration offered exciting announcements, and you can read those here. However, it felt wrong to attend a moment important to so many people and reduce it to just its news beats. This was about the Tennos, and after this weekend, I want to join them.
Tenno Con 2025 took place in London, Ontario, from July 18 to July 19, 2025.
