Quake Live, the free to play, browser based rendition of the classic iD shooter Quake, has been converted to a $10 title with added Steamworks support. While that's naturally angered a lot of players, what's irking them even more is that this update has also wiped their statistics, friends list, clan organisations and in some cases even in-game settings, all with no warning from the developers it was happening.
This has led to a rush of terrible reviews for the game on Steam, with some branding it as the death of the greatest FPS ever created.
"There’s no possible way I can thank person or a team who purged, truncated, nullified the entire statistics, awards and progress we’ve earned during past 5 years," one ex-fan posted "What the actual hell were you thinking? Oh, let’s start from scratch – 5 years is nothing. Old nicknames and clans? Screw it, we’ll give them steam achievements!"
This move seems especially cruel since the people still playing Quake have remained loyal to it for almost two decades and have been playing it on Steam or online since 2007. So why the change?
The point, according to the iD response, was to incorporate more Steam features into the experience, though it failed to address any of the real complaints by users, or the fact that it did all this without warning or an apology.
As Kotaku points out too, Linux and Mac players now can't play at all either. What was iD thinking?
