Quake Champions drops free-to-play for a $9.99 price

id Software has stopped running Quake Champions as a service. The arena shooter's 1.31 point release, published to Steam on 23 September 2026, converts the game from a free-to-play title into a paid application that sells for $9.99 in the United States, and switches off everything that used to be sold inside it.

What the update removes

The list is long. Microtransactions and in-app purchasing are gone, and so are the in-game store, battle passes, weekly and event challenges, loot boxes and daily login rewards. Platinum and Shards, the two currencies the game ran on, have been removed from the system entirely. Quake Champions on the Microsoft Store has been retired, leaving Steam as the only place the game is sold.

In their place, every owner gets the roster. All Champions are unlocked for everyone, along with the vanity content from 30 seasons, and items that previously required Platinum or Shards are now selectable from the Customization menu. Third-party entitlements such as the AMD Ruby Nyx and the Twitch Rocket Launcher stay tied to the accounts that earned them, and Golden Crowns remain a ranked reward for reaching Elite.

Existing players keep their copy

Anyone who played before 23 September keeps access at no cost. Steam owners are upgraded automatically, while Microsoft Store players need to link their existing Bethesda.net account to Steam. id Software says that migration service runs from 23 September to 7 October 2026 and grants access within 48 hours, with customer support reviewing failures case by case. Progression, rankings and champion statistics carry across on the same Bethesda.net account, and the studio is refunding Platinum packs bought in the 60 days before the change, with a six-month window for players who paid in yen under Japanese law.

What arrives with the patch

New content is deliberately thin. The update adds QCON 2026 starting weapon skins, five Team Arena clan profile icons and two weapon shaders, alongside a callvote system for removing cheaters mid-match, a profile level cap raised to 999, weapon accuracy readouts on the HUD, an adaptive frame-rate stabiliser and a broad pass over bot behaviour. id Software has also consolidated its datacentre locations to fill matches faster and reduced the volume of network data sent for each player.

The shortest line in the announcement is also the most consequential. 'No additional content updates are planned at this time,' it says, which makes the 1.31 build the finished product rather than the start of a new commercial chapter.

Our opinion

Charging $9.99 for a game that will not be developed further is an honest trade rather than a cynical one, because what the buyer receives is complete: a full roster, thirty seasons of cosmetic work and no store nagging at them afterwards. The refund scheme is the part that deserves attention, since it quietly admits that Platinum bought in the two months before the shutdown was money spent on a currency the studio was about to delete, and the Japanese window is wider only because local consumer law insists on it. Retiring the Microsoft Store build and paying for the migration to Steam is housekeeping most publishers skip. The uncomfortable question is what a paid barrier does for a game whose appeal was always that it cost nothing to try, and whether the people most likely to enjoy arena shooting will pay to find out.