New Quake project hinted at again as Quake on Steam gets beta branch update

It looks like owners of the original Quake game on Steam may be in for a big surprise as QuakeCon 2024 draws ever closer.

The SteamDB tracker, which gives users an insight into the mysterious goings-on on the Steam storefront’s backend, has picked up two updates to the original Quake game on Steam.

According to the history that’s being logged by the tracker, a new beta branch has been added to the game, as well as a new 64-bit executable. What could that mean? It could mean that we’re getting some sort of ray-tracing update to the original game (simiarly to what we’ve seen with Quake 2, previously) or it could mean that we’re getting a teaser for a whole new Quake project, too.

This isn’t the first hint we’ve had at a new Quake game in recent weeks. For a few minutes after the official QuakeCon 2024 schedule was published, the event’s website had some extra bits of detail about the opening show celebrating 25 years of Quake, including a snippet about a ‘revitalised Quake game’.

“Quake is back, in this special stream John Linneman from Digital Foundry talks to Jerk Gustafsson of MachineGames about the title’s iconic legacy and what it meant to both of them. The pair will also discuss the additional content MachineGames have contributed to this revitalized edition,” the panel’s synopsis once read, before it was edited to remove this paragraph.

That suggests that we are, indeed, going to get some sort of shiny new Quake project – and it stands to reason that Bethesda and id Software could even tease something else about the series later down the line, too.

This year’s QuakeCon will not take place at its usual spot in Dallas. Instead, it’s going to be a digital-only affair called QuakeCon at Home, and it’s back today (August 19) with the whole thing set to wrap up on August 21.