Earth shaking news

After nearly a decade as a free-to-play game, Quake Champions is dropping all that nonsense in favour of being a nice and simple premium release on Steam. That means no more battle passes, no more loot boxes, no more premium currencies. They've even got rid of the store.

If you've played the game through any free events on Steam in the past, then you will be upgraded to a full version of the game automatically. And if you've bought any premium currencies in the past two months will be refunded.

However, while this is a welcome change, it should be seen in the context of Xbox's mission to fire 3200 developers.

Quake Champions developer id Software were hit in the first wave of Microsoft layoffs, seeing more than 100 staff fired from the storied developer. The layoffs have pushed id Software-owner Zenimax to focus on its largest games and series, which means id dropped projects focused on Perfect Dark and new series. While those who remain at the studio after the layoff maintain that id can continue to make new games, others are less confident.

This update to Quake Champions also comes in a week where Xbox have laid off more staff and consolidated studios. Still, doing the work to make Quake Champions continue in some form is better than simply shutting it down. That said, it does sound as though there is not much more road for Quake Champions. In the post announcing these changes, the team write that "No additional content updates are planned at this time."

On top of scrapping its free-to-play systems, id have provided some updates to Quake Champions. There's a new Callvote System, allowing players to kick cheaters and abusive players, and along with other fixes, they've improved the game's network performance. They have also reduced the number of data centres, which will make servers more populated, but that may also mean depending where in the world you're playing you'll have either fewer server options or slower performance.

Again, while this is a welcome change for the game, and better than simply having the servers turned off, this change needs to be seen in light of Xbox looking for any way they can to chisel off their rough edges and squish themselves down to a few series: Minecraft, Halo, Fallout, and not much more besides.