Quake Champions stopped being free-to-play on September 23, when update 1.31 turned the arena shooter into a paid Steam product priced at $9.99. Dot Esports reported that Bethesda made the change and ended the game’s run of seasonal updates.
Today's update marks a new chapter for Quake Champions as we transition the game from a free-to-play service to a paid application on Steam.
Dot Esports reported that the change went live alongside update 1.31 on September 23, removing microtransactions and battle passes while unlocking all champions and almost every cosmetic item. Players who played the game before the update can keep playing without paying; new players pay $9.99. The update notes said the new version appears in the Steam library of anyone who previously played it there at no additional cost.
PC Gamer published the list of what came out of the game with the switch to a paid release.
- Battle pass
- Weekly and event challenges
- The store
- Platinum and Shard currencies
- Loot boxes
- Daily login rewards
- Champion progression, the shard reward path
In their place, every champion is unlocked from the start and most vanity content is now available to all users. PC Gamer reported that recently purchased premium currency will be refunded, and that players who spent money on skins over the years now share them with everyone else.
Dot Esports reported that the game remains online and free for its existing owners. PC Gamer, which described Quake Champions as id Software’s live-service experiment and dated the removed systems to the game’s 2017 arrival, said it had received mostly cosmetic updates in recent years for the few hundred players who still play it. Classic skins for Quake Ranger and the Doom Slayer are now included as standard, the outlet said.
The update notes said the paid release carries 30 seasons of content, and that no additional content updates are planned at this time.
