Digital Extremes’s Founder & CEO James Schmalz Steps Down, Soulframe Lead Taking Over

A big change is happening at Warframe developer Digital Extremes. Today, the company’s founder, James Schmalz, announced that he will be stepping down from his position as CEO. He also announced his successor will be Steve Sinclair, the current Chief Creative Officer, who will take over the position immediately.

Sinclair has been with Digital Extremes for over two decades, leading the development of Warframe and currently works on the upcoming MMORPG Soulframe.

Schmalz won’t be leaving the company outright. He will remain on the board of directors. The change was announced in a blog post on the Digital Extremes site today in which Schmalz said that he felt “immensely privileged to have been able to play [his] part in shaping [the] industry”. He added, “building our stellar team has been a fulfilling life work”, and praised Sinclair as the “ideal leader to take [DE] and [their] growing community of players into a new era”.

Sinclair also issued a statement thanking Schmalz for everything he’s done, including green-lighting Warframe in 2012.