Players looking for quick arena combat get more than 100 arenas and over twelve modes in Quake Live, from Duel to Team Deathmatch. At ≈ $2.66 from CDKeys, the key question is whether you expect to return for competitive multiplayer matches. Its Steam rating of 87%% across 4,398 reviews adds context, but your decision still rests on whether its fast, direct format appeals to you.At $9.99 from CDKeys, weigh the price against the range of arenas and modes.
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Price History
Past 36 months · Updated daily
Historical Low~ $2.402025-02Current Low Across Stores~ $8.69Humble Storevs. Historical Low+262%
Prices cover Steam and 39 authorized stores; only legitimate offers are counted. The chart shows weekly market-wide lows and Steam's official price across the past 36 months.
01About Quake Live
Quake Live is a fast, competitive arena FPS where you face players around the world in multiplayer matches. More than 100 arenas and over twelve modes include Duel, Free-for-All, Team Deathmatch, and Capture the Flag. Career stats and match history record your play.Steam players rate it 87%% positive across 4,398 reviews.The Steam PC language listing specifies English with full audio.
$2.402025-02-07 · HHumble StoreBase game · same records as the chart above; USD history, not a regional Steam low.
Language support
Language
Interface
Subtitles
Audio
English
Yes
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Yes
Steam PC edition data · 2026-11-07
02Before you buy
Arenas and modes
Quake Live is a fast arena FPS with more than 100 arenas and over twelve modes, including Free-for-All, Duel, and Capture the Flag.
Language
The Steam PC language listing specifies English with full audio.
03Frequently asked questions
Which modes are included?
Modes include Free-for-All, Duel, Team Deathmatch, Clan Arena, Capture the Flag, and Domination.
Does it have online multiplayer?
Yes. The description features matches with friends and players worldwide.
Does it track stats and matches?
The description says career stats and match history are available.
Popular Steam reviews
Native-language selection · 10 reviews
Selected helpful reviews in this language show both recommendations and criticisms. This selection does not represent the overall positive rating; opinions reflect the version reviewed.
RecommendedSteam player
You'll realize how far the Online FPS genre has fallen in its pursuit of the lowest common denominator when you play this 20 year old game and it shows you things you've never seen before, game types you've never heard of, and speed that will humble you.
Playing Quake, you begin to see that modern online shooters have leveling systems and gear grinds because most players are already experts when they play their first game. The grind is a way to keep people playing when they have no other reason to play. Quake doesn't need the grind because the progression happens with you instead of your gear: You need to actually practice to get better at this game. And that is a lot more fun than grinding to unlock the next gun in some gear tree.Show moreShow less
17.7 hours at review2,719 people found this helpful
Received for free
Not recommendedSteam player
F2P since 2010.
now, 10$ in 2015.
Thanks Bethesda
Don't forget to preorder Fallout 4 guys.Show moreShow less
3.9 hours at review1,384 people found this helpful
Received for free
RecommendedSteam player
At least it won't steal all your money with virtual hats.Show moreShow less
0.8 hours at review1,722 people found this helpful
Received for free
Not recommendedSteam player
removed linux supportShow moreShow less
45.8 hours at review1,015 people found this helpful
Received for free
RecommendedSteam player
The people giving this negative reviews are mostly veterans who didn't pay attention to anything SyncError and sponge have been saying for the past year. Here are some facts:
1) They have been telling us to switch to Steam for over a year. The people who already had the game on Steam didn't have to pay a single cent, even if they weren't subscribers. The subscribers who didn't switch even though they were told to do so can mail support and get the game for free.
2) The friends lists weren't saved because the accounts no longer exist. Just find your friends in-game and send them a friend request. We can do that in-game now through the Admin menu, something we couldn't do before.
3) The game works on Linux with Wine/playonlinux.
4) We have user-owned private servers and LAN now, something the fanbase has been begging for since the private Beta.
5) We still have stats. Just not the stats from before the switch, as again, the accounts no longer exist.
6) We can switch names now.
7) Delicious, delicious UTF-8 support finally lets us use Unicode letters in chat.
8) People are working on a replacement for QLRanks.
9) The one-time payment is about a 3rd of the price of a premium/pro account, and everyone can do everything the premium/pro users could.
10) We now have Valve Anti-Cheat. Cheaters who get banned now have to pay money for a new account.
11) The new UI and settings menu are far, far better than the old ones.
12) Watching demos is no longer a pain without 3rd party tools. We can now view our demos by pressing "Replays", there is a list of timestamps for each frag that happened in the game, and the new demo viewer itself is all kinds of awesome.
13) SyncError confirmed that we'll be getting gibs DLC.
The update was great. Stop whining.
UPDATE: QLRanks is now replaced with QLStats, which uses Glicko instead of TrueSkill for team-games, though in-game it is still called Elo. The difference between Glicko and TrueSkill is that Glicko is based on score per minute instead of wins. Duel still uses plain old Elo.
Also, a bunch of old OSP/CPMA/RA3 content is being brought in via Steam Workshop, so you will see a number of old maps with letter/number combinations instead of names being voted on various servers.Show moreShow less
116.5 hours at review1,010 people found this helpful
Received for free
Not recommendedSteam player
"Pay money for an altered version of a game from 1999 that's been free for 5 years"
No thanks
cShow moreShow less
2.2 hours at review841 people found this helpful
Received for free
RecommendedSteam player
Recommended.
Older gamers that didn't know Quake was still played today, rejoice.
Younger gamers that may want to try their hands at something difficult yet fun, welcome. We need you blood; come and quench our thirst. Well, actually, the way Quake Live is made, chances are new players will get to play between themselves and mid-skilled players mostly so I guess I'll have to wait for you to escalate the skill cliff. But please do so!
So what is Quake Live? Some might say this is a Free To Play version of Quake 3 Arena. There is some truth to that and this is how QL was identified since its inception yet there is more to it. Q3A had mods, QL tries to incorporate them into the main game instead. Q3A had a large community running plenty of servers, QL has servers ran exclusively by id software with the option for subscribers to spawn their own customized using this infrastructure. Q3A had a one time payment, QL generates its revenues through a subscription system. It's worth noting that despite being Free To Play, QL is not Pay To Win (and it's a shame that both expressions have almost become synonymous today).
You might still wonder why you should play QL if you have Q3A. Well the main argument is kinda lame but I'm afraid it is true nonetheless : QL is overwhelmingly more populated than any other Quake at the moment. But there are reasons for that! For starters, it's easy to get into. You press the "install" button, you start the game, you create your account then you click on "Play Now" and you're set. You won't be told you don't have the right mod installed or you lack a specific version of a map. It's easy (but you can still spend some time tweaking your config if you want to). The same argument can be made about the default gameplay itself and this is where things get somewhat controversial. Purists say the recent changes made to make the game more welcoming to newcomers are a travesty. While I agree that the new default settings are inferior for us experienced players, I'm still open to the idea that new players will have it easier and have more fun that way. You can be sure I will still be there in the servers running the classic settings, waiting for the courageous survivors who defied the default ruleset and want some more. In any case, QL is still very unforgiving, given your opponents catch on your mistakes. The best thing we can hope for is a larger playerbase which will allow tighter skillmatching and a better experience overall for everyone.
For those who don't know Quake 3 Arena or Quake in general, the above paragraph is probably kinda meaningless. Let me list some important aspects of Q3A/QL which make it a good game :
- Fast paced. Well, I guess if you like taking it slow and camping in bushes with your sniper riffle in other games it's cool for you, but you're missing out on something!
- Simple rules. Anybody can understand the objectives very fast. You know you have to kill more than you die in a duel. It's nothing hard to conceptualize.
- Diversity in the weapons. Yep. It's not all a thousand variations of machine-guns, handguns and rifles. Unreal Tournament is arguably superior to Quake in this field but it's still worth noting.
- Vertical gameplay. It may sound kinda stupid but this axis is a lot more in the typical map design of an Arena Shooter like Quake and it's a lot more fun this way.
- Great movement system. Easy to use (WASD), hard to master (and it's so satisfying to fly around the map at high speed).
- Gameplay depth. This one doesn't necessarily apply to every gametype but it is the most important point in my opinion. The game is old yet there's still room to improve for EVERY player. If you think Quake is all about shooting down enemies without thinking, you couldn't be more wrong. Sure, aim is part of the game, but you need to deal twice as much damage as your enemy if he has twice your health/armor because he controls the map better...
tl;dr It's a good game and with the recent changes everybody should be able to get some kills and fun. Let's just hope you can have fun without winning every match, because we can't all be winners and chances are against newbies in that field.Show moreShow less
75.5 hours at review852 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
We've had it all in the past year, from Bethesda trying to weasel in paid mods, to Overkill stuffing microtransactions in after promising that they wouldn't-
To a game that has been free for years, with no warning, and reset everything?! What are the upsides from this other than "You can get achevements instantly now"?
This was the one free game I knew I could rely on to be engaging right off the hop and always worth getting a few friends into, and now all I have is TF2 (The milked out cashcow that is it's current update), and facebook games.
I'm not going to be telling anyone about this game anymore, and I hope it either goes back to f2p, or it drops into deepsteam where it should never be seen or bought again.
Disgraceful.
Edit, this isn't a tf2/tes/pd2 review, you know what I meant.Show moreShow less
1.9 hours at review458 people found this helpful
Received for free
RecommendedSteam player
GAME OF THE YEAR 1999
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GAME OF THE YEAR 2014
GAME OF THE YEAR ∞Show moreShow less
8.5 hours at review428 people found this helpful
Received for free
Not recommendedSteam player
D-didn't this used to be free?Show moreShow less
2.8 hours at review410 people found this helpful
Received for free
Source: original Steam user reviews. Helpful votes are an archived snapshot, not live data. Last collected: 08/15/2026.
