Quake Champions is no longer free. With update 1.31 on 23 September, id Software turned the arena shooter into a paid game: it now costs $9.99 on Steam. In return, everything left over from the free-to-play model is gone and every Champion is unlocked. No further content updates are planned, id Software says.
What changed
- Removed: the store, microtransactions, battle passes, loot boxes, the Platinum and Shard currencies, weekly challenges and login rewards.
- Unlocked: every Champion and almost all cosmetics from 30 seasons. Only partner items such as the AMD and Twitch rewards, and merit rewards like QuakeCon belts, stay hidden unless you already had them.
- Added: new starting weapon skins, plus fixes for crashes on map load and an anti-cheat false positive that showed up as Error 103.
- Refunds: anyone who bought Platinum in the 60 days before 23 September gets their money back, Eurogamer reports.
If you already played
Anyone who played Quake Champions on Steam before gets the paid version for free, and it will appear in your library on its own. The Microsoft Store version is trickier: it is being shut down, leaving Steam as the only place to play. According to Eurogamer, if your Bethesda and Steam accounts are linked, a Steam copy arrives within 48 hours. If they are not, you need to link them by 7 October to get your free copy.
How it got here
Quake Champions launched in paid early access in 2017, went free-to-play in 2018 and only got its full release in 2022. At its Steam launch it peaked at 17,476 concurrent players, according to SteamDB figures cited by Eurogamer. On 24 September, the day after the switch, Steam showed 516 people playing.
Rock Paper Shotgun ties the decision to layoffs at id Software. In practice the game is not being shut down but frozen: you can still play and everything is unlocked, but development is over. For $9.99 you get a proper Quake III-style arena shooter, it will just get harder to find opponents month by month.
Sources
id Software: Quake Champions 1.31 Point Release, Steam, 23.09.2026. Eurogamer, 24.09.2026. Rock Paper Shotgun. Current player count from the Steam Web API. Screenshots from the official Steam gallery.
