Id Software and Bethesda announced today that they would be making Quake Champions free to play permanently in a similar model to Killer Instinct.
Bethesda and id Software made an announcement today that they’re going to be making Quake Champions free to play. The shift will be permanent as well, meaning that you won’t have to pay for the game ever again, though there will likely also be microtransactions for it in the future.
Quake Champions is a multiplayer focused first person arena shooter that is based off the Quake universe. First announced at E3 2016’s Bethesda conference, the game is PC exclusive but with the Quake Champions free to play shift it will likely be able to get to a new audience that used to not be able to (or not be willing to spend the money on) playing it before.
Quake Champions features a number of different characters, including other id Software protagonists such as BJ Blazkowicz and the Doom Slayer, and a number of other weapons to imitate the frantic multiplayer games of the original Quake games. The game will be running on a model similar to that of Microsoft’s Killer Instinct, where the game is mostly free to play but additional characters like BJ and the Doom Slayer will have to be bought. Originally, you’ll be limited to the character Ranger.
While the game hasn’t released yet, it has been open for beta for a while now, and Beteshda moving the game to Steam and making Quake Champions free to play will likely help it to attract a wider audience, and considering how successful Killer Instinct’s model has been for that game, it might do just as well for Quake Champions, especially if the characters are good.
Of course, that will all still depend on how good the game is. While a good close-range and frantic-paced arena shooter is something that’s been missing from multiplayer games for a good while, Quake Champions will need to work to get to a good level of popularity.
Quake Champions is currently available to play on Steam, exclusively on PC.
