Quake Champions takes a shower, shedding all its 2017 live-service grime and becoming a $10 game

Behold, some wild Quake Champions patch notes

• Removed Battle Pass
• Removed Weekly / Event Challenges
• Removed the Store
• Removed Platinum and Shard Currencies
• Removed Loot Boxes
• Removed Daily Login Rewards
• Removed Champion Progression (the shard reward path)
• Most Vanity Content is now Available to All Users

"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," the update reads. "Quake Champions is now available for one low price on Steam. No additional content updates are planned at this time. If you previously played Quake Champions on Steam, the new version will appear in your Steam Library at no additional cost."

After nine years, Quake Champions is a live-service game no more: The free-to-play arena shooter is now even more old school as a regular $10 product on Steam. All champions are unlocked from the jump, so you don't have to buy characters piecemeal like way too many games were asking us to do in the mid-2010s. Recently purchased premium currency will be refunded, but if you spent years dropping cash on skins, it might be a little awkward that everybody else now gets those at no additional cost.

This is a nicer ending than I expected for id's live-service experiment, which has received mostly cosmetic updates in recent years for the few hundred people that continue to love it. Though no longer free, it's easily a better game with its loot boxes and store tab gone, and one I'll be happy to fire up occasionally for a few rounds of instagib.

Also, these classic skins for Quake Ranger and Doom Slayer come stock now, so that's good stuff:

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