After half a year spent undercover within the Warframe community, Warframe’s Design Director Scott McGregor reveals that he was in fact that one guy that you were in a group with that one time and that he totally remembers that embarrassing thing you said and did.

ARA, MARS—”Yup. Surprise!” said McGregor in response to another Tenno seeking confirmation on his undercover adventure after having guessed the identity of the account. “I was that Rhino you kept complaining about.” McGregor’s smirk grew as the bashful Tenno turned red with shame. For nearly a year, McGregor had been playing on an alternate account stripped bare of his perks of being an employee at Digital Extremes. No free Platinum, no free warframes or weapons, no godmode, and no noclip. He slogged through Warframe’s new player experience in order to develop a better understanding of the concerns and problems which new players have been attempting to hurdle over for years. The goal: to gain the insight necessary to improve the new player experience, adjust the balance of a variety of warframes and weapons, and address concerns with Warframe’s progression systems.

It came as a shock for many players when McGregor revealed the identity of his alternate account; no one had expected he had been so present in the community and had assumed that the very brief and vague mentions of his undercover playthrough were equally short. McGregor reported a shocking 2240 hours played on the account since its creation roughly 8 months ago. “I’ve been clocking in as much time as I can. Sometimes, when I’m at my desk here at the office, I just start running a bunch of missions in a row.” reported McGregor. “It’s been an interesting experience to say the least.”

McGregor also remembers that one time another Tenno insulted him for using Mag on a Grineer mission prior to her rework as well as when a group of Tenno criticized his use of Limbo on an Excavation mission. “Mostly you guys just kept doing dumb things without realizing it and that was great. It’s honestly the reason I kept at it for so long.” McGregor had recorded many of his sessions, though not publicly streamed or uploaded at this time, which include footage of players struggling to jump up ledges, running into Grineer Sensor Bar doorways, getting knocked off the map by Shockwave MOAs, and instantly dying against Juggernauts. TCN’s Senior Gossip Correspondent was invited over to McGregor’s office at Digital Extremes for an exclusive look at recorded footage from the experience. His highlight reel includes an autotuned rendition of one player’s angry rant over voice chat saying “Scorches are such bullshit! Do the devs even play their own game?!”

“I knew eventually you guys would figure out who I was, though.” sighed McGregor as he scrolled through a massive collection of recorded videos. The experiment had lasted much longer than McGregor had initially anticipated, but the data he had collected proved invaluable. Sheldon Carter, Warframe’s Studio Manager, added that “Scott’s research is already being used to improve Warframe. 99% of the bugs we patch through are thanks to his efforts alone as one of the players. As a result, we now how have our QA team playing the game once every month to see if they can catch these kinds of bugs, too.”

When asked if there were plans for any more undercover work, McGregor replied “I guess my next project will be to start posing as a new player on the Warframe Official Forums to see what the experience is like there.”