Quake Champions adds CTF game mode, gets rid of loot boxes

Quake Champions has finally added its long-awaited Capture the Flag (CTF) mode—and completed its transition away from loot boxes to a Battle Pass system that rewards you with cosmetics.

Capture the Flag matches are split into two halves, and you can play them on five maps, including Citadel, which was also added in the update. It's inspired by the Quake Live CTF map Stonekeep, and is Champions' "most symmetrical map yet".

As for the new progression system, you'll be able to earn cosmetics just for playing the game, but paying for a Battle Pass will net you more exclusive items as you level up. On the free side, you can complete both daily and weekly challenges. Doing so will give you shards, which you'll be able to spend on skins, shaders and vanity items for a champion of your choosing. You'll also be able to unlock new champions with shards.

On the Battle Pass, which will cost 1,000 platinum, you'll be able to spend XP to level it up, which will get you more rewards, many of which will be unique to the Battle Pass. You can read more about the in-game economy changes here.

For Season One of the Battle Pass, all players will be reset to level one— you'll need to reach level 10 before you can play ranked games, and you'll also have to complete qualifier matches. For future seasons, you'll be reset to level one again but you won't have to wait to play ranked matches.

You can read the full patch notes here.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.