Quake Champions Finally Exits Early Access Five Years After Its Release

Five years after its original release, Quake Champions is finally out of early acccess. The full release of id Software's free-to-play shooter coincides with several games arriving on PC Game Pass, which was announced during Bethesda's QuakeCon event earlier today.

First released back in 2017, Quake Champions is an evolution of id Software's classic arena shooter. Asked why it didn't receive a full release when it went free-to-play in 2018, community developer Joshua Boyle said Quake Champions wasn't ready.

"I'd say we were at a crawl [at launch last year] and we're at a walk now," Boyle said at the time.

Quake Champions has enjoyed mostly positive reviews on Steam, but it has generally failed to take hold among fans in a manner similar to other free-to-play shooters, even with the addition of familiar faces like Doom Slayer and Wolfenstein's B.J. Blazkowicz.

Quake Champions is currently available on Steam and will also be downloadable via the Microsoft Store alongside Daggerfall. Meanwhile, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Wolfenstein 3D, Elder Scrolls Legends: Battlespire, and TES Adventures: Redguard are all headed to PC Game Pass, where they may soon be joined by Death Stranding.

In the meantime, QuakeCon also afforded a fresh glimpse of Redfall, which will feature missions so large that they will be able to encompass the entirety of Prey's space station.

Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.