Today marks a new beginning for Quake Live. Last year id software expanded their platform to Steam, and today they have retired their old launcher and services in favor of integrating a robust array of Steamworks alternatives. Now fully utilizing Steam for Friends, Chat, Lobbies, Voice Chat, Server Browser, Statistics, Achievements, Anti-cheat, Trading Cards, and Workshop.

Steamworks Overview
Steam accounts are now used for all player interactions. Players may now use their Steam display name and profile avatar in-game, and still uniquely identify players by SteamId and Profile pages. Steam Statistics will track your progress in-game, and you will instantly be awarded achievements as you earn them, rather than as matches are completed. Improve your teamplay communication by chatting with players using our new Voice Chat. As you play online you can use the player admin menu to select players and send them Friend Invites, and right click on your friends in the Friend List to view their Statistics and Achievements progress.

Start Match & Server Hosting
New Start Match feature allows players to run their own Listen Servers which support Internet, LAN, and local bot-match play. And now it is easier for a group of friends to play either Internet or LAN matches through the new Lobby feature. Have a party of friends join one player's lobby, and the lobby leader can then join an Internet match through the Match Browser or start a listen server of their own - party members in the lobby will automatically migrate to the server so that your friends are all together when it is time to play. To spawn persistent Dedicated Servers, we have now made the Linux server files freely available on Steam Tools.

Our server functionality has also been greatly expanded, allowing players to define unique rulesets we call Factories, and allow players to define map pools of varying Game Modes and Factories to run on the same server. Players can then move freely between modes, or servers can be configured to run a mappool of one fixed game mode. Server owners now have the ability to also define persistent access list to automatically grant admin or moderator privileges to certain users, or prevent access entirely from banned players.

Steam Workshop
Download new maps, gametype variations, player models, and more through the integrated Steam Workshop support. Find something new and cool every day courtesy of some of Quake's most hardcore fans. As example workshop items, we have three official Workshop items: Quake Live Holiday Pack, Quake Live Extras Pack, and the QuakeCon 2015 Match Settings as examples of how to add both new map content as well as custom factories to Quake Live.

Subscription Service Retired
By retiring the services and subscription service, all players now have the same benefits and features in-game. All players can participate in map voting processes, have full access to customize their game to the same degree as others, and have the ability to run their own Listen Servers and configure their matches to their own liking. Players wishing to have more control over how they play now also have new callvote options, allowing them to opt into some of our newer gameplay mechanics such as Starting Weapons, Global Ammo, and Item Timers. Over time we found that these features were effective in some modes more than others, and so modes like Free For All now have loadouts disabled by default.

Code Fixes & Features
In addition to the new Steamworks features, this update is an accumulation of a year of code updates, optimizations, and over 4,500 map fixes. We hope all players enjoy soaking in our new UI, in-game settings menus, spectating features, UTF-8 text chat, True Type Font support, Workshop, and our Stats API. We have had great pleasure working on this project over the past 8 years, and cannot wait to see what the community comes up with in the many years to come.