Quake Champions is no longer a free-to-play game.

That sentence would have seemed unthinkable a few years ago, when live service was the default model for almost every multiplayer shooter. But id Software's arena shooter is now removing the storefront, the battle passes and the currencies, and asking new players for a flat ten dollars instead. It is a quiet, unusual move, and it tells us a fair bit about where the game stands today.

A shooter that never quite caught on

If you had forgotten Quake Champions existed, you are not alone. The PvP arena shooter released in 2022 as a free-to-play title, and it never really became the phenomenon its pedigree suggested it might. Many players treated it as a passing curiosity: something to try for a weekend before moving on. Its concurrent player numbers on Steam reflect that, even though the game has shipped a remarkable 30 seasons of content.

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