It's a big day for anyone who was avoiding Quake Champions due to its live-service elements. Four years after the FPS first left early access, it's become a completely paid-for game on Steam with no microtransactions and all the characters unlocked for everyone.
The announcement calls this "a new chapter" for the shooter. "Along with 30 seasons worth of content to enjoy, all Champions are now unlocked for everyone, and most vanity content is available to equip," reads the message from id Software and Bethesda. "Battle Passes and microtransactions have been removed. Quake Champions is now available for one low price on Steam."
The latest installment in the Quake series was already available on Valve's store, and had been for a number of years. It actually started out in early access before transitioning to 1.0 in 2022, and at one point it held a price-tag before going free-to-play with the standard business model of battle passes and such.
Having such a low barrier of entry didn't do much to draw in the masses, though. The all-time concurrent player peak on SteamCharts is 17,332, in June 2018. Since then, the game's brought in a community in the hundreds to low thousands.
Not exactly booming, in other words, and it's a shame because Quake is so pivotal to the first-person shooter space. The early releases helped shape and define online multiplayer, and you'll find several older installments still have dedicated communities.
It's noted there will be no more content updates to Quake Champions going forward. I expected that much regardless, given the layoffs and structural changes across Microsoft's games division, including Bethesda and id Software.
In addition to the full roster, most customization items are available for everyone as well. Honestly, for the price – a mere ten bucks – you could do a lot worse than give this a go.
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