Id Software still deciding if they want Quake Champions to be free-to-play

After being revealed at E3 2016, Quake Champions had gone dark until recently at QuakeCon when Bethesda released the game's first official gameplay trailer (seen above) much to the delight of old-school hardcore FPS enthusiasts. Suffice it to say, Champions looks and feels like Quake, which is good news and unsurprising given how well DOOM was able to emulate its predecessors.

One of the things id Software is currently wrestling with is whether or not they want Quake Champions to be free-to-play. Id Software head Tim Willits told PC Gamer:

"I can definitely say that is a really hard problem, and so for us we’re trying to figure out exactly what people want more of, and how they perceive it…And I’m not even trying to be cagey! It’s not like we know and just aren’t trying to tell anybody, we don’t know and we’re still trying to figure this out."

It's an interesting problem, to say the least because you could make a case that Quake might be better suited for a free-to-play model. Looking around at the competition, like Overwatch, whose gameplay is built on a roster of mechanically diverse characters, you can see where Quake could at least be perceived to have less content. That may not necessarily be the case, but Quake's foundation is built more on skill with characters that function in the exact same way, so there's only so many ways to play the game.

Apart from that, Willits says things are going extraordinarily well, especially in the wake of DOOM's success so the team feels much more confident and comfortable making Quake Champions. Whatever id decides, we will be excited to play Quake Champions.

Source: [PC Gamer]