Quake turned 30 back in June, and id Software saved the celebration for QuakeCon 2026, shadow dropping Dawn of the Machine, a brand new episode from MachineGames, as a free update available today for anyone who owns the game.
The episode casts Ranger into a dimension of endless illusion, where he has been reliving the same violent cycles and dying thousands of times in a futile bid to escape. His rumored way out is the Nightmare Machine, which sits beyond hordes of monsters twisted by an eternity in the Elder realms, and destroying it is believed to be the only way to break the loop. The campaign spans 19 all-new maps with a dedicated episode hub, a new soundtrack, hidden secrets, and a new deathmatch map on the multiplayer side.
That loop isn’t just story dressing, either, because the episode is built around a replayable structure where each return reshapes the experience. Runes unlock previously sealed paths through familiar spaces, while persistent health and ammo upgrades carry across runs, adding a layer of progression Quake has never had. New enemy variants include the Rocket Ogre, Demo Dog, and Blood Shambler, and the arsenal grows with the Super Axe, which unleashes lightning on successive strikes, and the Laser Cannon, which fires ricocheting projectiles.
Beyond the campaign, the update adds an id Vault containing a behind-the-scenes gallery of development assets and playable maps from Quake’s earliest days, three new achievements, and a cheats menu for single-player. A batch of fixes rides along as well, headlined by improved interpolation that reduces input latency.
Dawn of the Machine is free on the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, XBOX One, XBOX Series X|S, Switch, Switch 2 (via backward compatibility), and PC versions of Quake, covering Steam, the Microsoft Store, and Game Pass. The Epic Games Store and GOG versions are the holdouts for now.
MachineGames has been down this road before, having built Dimensions of the Past for Quake’s 20th anniversary, Dimension of the Machine for the 2021 remaster, and Call of the Machine for the Quake II remaster. QuakeCon itself is also celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, and id streamed a celebration from the show with co-founder John Romero and the MachineGames team.
