id Software just dragged Quake Champions kicking and screaming out of the F2P graveyard and slapped a $9.99 price tag on it eight years after launch. Patch 1.31 nukes the battle pass, the store, Platinum currency, loot boxes, daily logins, and every other live-service parasite that had been sucking the life out of the game since 2018. All 30 seasons of content, every Champion, and most cosmetics are now unlocked for everyone who owns it.

The Microsoft Store version got straight-up executed and the game is now Steam-exclusive. Existing Steam players get the full paid version for free automatically. Microsoft Store refugees have until October 7 to link accounts or they're SOL. Anyone who bought Platinum in the last 60 days gets a refund. New buyers pay once and that's it. No more updates planned, no more seasons, just the game as it stands.

This is the rare case of a live-service experiment actually getting a mercy kill instead of slowly bleeding out. Quake Champions peaked at over 17k concurrent and lately sat around 600 players. After layoffs at id and the broader Xbox bloodbath, they finally admitted the model was dead and turned it into a straightforward purchase. The servers stay up for the people still playing. That's more dignity than most of these games get.