Quake Champions Will be Free to Play

Free-to-play players will only have access to Quake Champion‘s Ranger champion.

Bethesda Softwork has finally revealed the business model for Quake Champions, its upcoming Quake reboot. In an interview with Polygon, creative director Tim Willits reveals that the game will be fully free-to-play, but will also include a paid option. No mention of the dreaded microtransactions were had.

Essentially, free-to-play players will have access to all of Quake Champion‘s maps and modes, but only the Ranger champion. They can pay a one-off fee to permanently unlock all other champions, but Willits said there would also be in-game ways to get new champions. Think Smite and its founder’s pack.

“At its core, it’s a free-to-play game,” Willits said, “with the option to buy the Champion Pack and just get in and play with all the Champions. There are a number of Quake players that just want to play their Quake, right? And they are familiar with the business model of our previous games, and they are totally fine. ‘I want to buy the game. I want to start playing. I want to have access to all the Champions.’

“But then we also understand that we want to get as many people into the game as possible, especially outside of North America and Western Europe, where we have a massive fan base. So we want to have the flexibility to have a free-to-play option for those people.”

Free-to-play players will earn “favor” – the game’s in-game currency – and use it to temporarily unlock new champions. “I don’t want to use the word rent,” Willits said of the system. “You do spend favor to have access to them for a limited amount of time, yes. But you don’t spend any real money on it.”

Source: Polygon