Quake Live ditches F2P, becomes £6.99 Steam title

The Quake Live fanbase is one of the most hardcore and dedicated there is – so a surprise significant overnight change to the game has gone down like a lead balloon.

With no warning whatsoever former free-to-play browser title Quake Live has suddenly dropped its subscription services and acquired a 6.99 price tag on Steam.

By far the bigger blow for gamers, however, is that the change has wiped players’ friends lists and saved statistics. It has also played havoc with some users’ settings. In addition, those who had failed to change to the Steam version prior to the update must now pay to buy the game should they wish to continue playing, and no mechanism for refunding existing PRO token purchases has so far been offered.

Today marks a new beginning for Quake Live,” a belated message posted by Id Software after the update went live said. We are now fully utilizing Steam for Friends, Chat, Lobbies, Voice Chat, Server Browser, Statistics, Achievements, Anti-cheat, Trading Cards, and Workshop.

Steam accounts are now used for all player interactions. Players may now use their Steam display name and profile avatar in-game, and still uniquely identify players by SteamId and Profile pages. Steam Statistics will track your progress in-game, and you will instantly be awarded achievements as you earn them, rather than as matches are completed.

By retiring our services and subscription service, all players now have the same benefits and features in-game. All players can participate in map voting processes, have full access to customize their game to the same degree as others, and have the ability to run their own Listen Servers and configure their matches to their own liking.

We hope all players enjoy soaking in our new UI, in-game settings menus, spectating features, UTF-8 text chat, True Type Font support, Workshop, and our Stats API. We have had great pleasure working on this project over the past eight years, and cannot wait to see what the community comes up with in the many years to come.”

The developers have yet to directly respond to any player complaints.