Quake Champions just got a sudden spike in popularity

While some of us are still wondering whether the rumors about a possible Quake 6 will ever turn out to be true, we can blast away on Quake Champions. If you’ve never experienced the fast-paced FPS and you’re a fan of arena shooters, now seems to be a good time, as the game’s experiencing something of a boon.

Okay, “boon” might be overselling it slightly, but as noted by PCGamesN, Quake Champions has seen the concurrent player count peak to 1,943 in the space of a day. According to the most recent data from SteamDB, just 24 hours ago, only around 500 people were playing, but now – at the time of writing – 1,625 players are currently logged in.

If this was a case of the game going on sale, that would obviously explain this sudden rise in popularity. However, as you can see on Steam, Quake Champions is 100% free. You can’t exactly discount something that doesn’t require money to begin with. The only way you can go up from there is to make it so the game gives you money for playing. Hmm…now there’s a thought.

As if the game did a rocket jump

So why this surge in popularity? It’s not quite known, from what I can see. The most recent update for Champions was on September 12, which is fairly recently, but not enough to see player count go from a few hundred to nearly 2,000 in a matter of a few hours.

Maybe a well-known streamer has been playing it recently? Well, when I last checked Twitch under the “Quake Champions” label, only a few channels were broadcasting the game, with around 70 people viewing. So that’s not it.

No, it seems that, according to a recent thread on Reddit, there was a tournament that went ahead on Sunday, September 22 at 5PM CEST. The post says “Estoty is bringing us number 12 of its 2×2 TDM Quake Champions tournament series,” and that “all players can enter to win $150 in prize money.”

This tournament certainly lines up with the game’s very recent popularity spike, so that could explain it. Shame I didn’t know about it sooner, to be honest. Could have done with a spare $150.

I do remember playing the game several years ago. I recall it scratched a certain itch, taking me back to my Quake 3: Arena days, fighting low-poly bots in high-octane battle, dangerously close to an arena’s precipice. The glory days of first-person shooting, some may argue.