• News

This regurgitated AI slop is what Microsoft is doing with the Quake IP

Quake 2 can now played at pathetically low settings in a web browser powered by Microsoft's AI Copilot

Asif Khan

April 6, 2025 1:30 PM

5

Microsoft has been investing heavily in AI, with the company committing over $100 billion to its various artificial intelligence endeavors over the past few years. This weekend, gamers were given a look at the latest Copilot Gaming Experience, an extremely poor recreation of the iconic first person shooter Quake 2. Take a look.

This came to our attention over the weekend following a tweet from God Emperor of Video Games Geoff Keighley that drew an overwhelmingly negative response from fans of the Quake franchise. Many notable members of the Quake online community did not mince words, with Supreme Chancellor of Esports Rod "Slasher" Breslau saying "wow! it's dogshit!🤩" Gman chimed in asking "Is anyone genuinely impressed or intrigued by this slop?" Nightdive Studios Host Miss Slaughter simply requested that Geoff "Delete this shit." Adam Butterworth, an audio test engineer at Remedy Games, summed up things perfectly, saying that this is "Disgusting behaviour by a company that has laid off over 11,900 people in 2 years." There are hundreds of more angry and annoyed reactions burying both Geoff Keighley for sharing the video and Microsoft for thinking this would be received well by gamers and, more importantly, beaten down and abused fans of the Quake franchise.

Ignoring the use of AI here, the gameplay experience is worse than many players experienced when the game originally shipped in 1997. The web-based Copilot Gaming Experience demo features stuttering, laggy input, a time limit, no audio, a pathetically low resolution, and many more issues. Sure, it is a proof of concept, but this is not even remotely close to the company's previously stated goal of using AI in the interest of games preservation. This demo requires more computing power than my Pentium did in the 1990s and delivers worse performance as "every frame is created on the fly by an AI world model."

When Microsoft acquired ZeniMax Media, parent company of Bethesda and id Software, some people were hopeful that classic franchises like Quake would see new life backed by a massive company with tons of cash on hand. To see Microsoft use Quake 2 as training data for another AI tool in search of a purpose is beyond disappointing for many players. This is especially sad to see for fans after years of sitting by while Quake Champions receded into insignificance and the once great FPS esport faded into the darkness.

If you want to try this web-based AI demo for yourself, it is available only as a browser-based experience, but it would probably be a better use of your time to play Shacknews' first game, Bubbletron, which is also browser-based but features sound, music, and much more stable FPS performance. Or players could check out the excellent Quake 2 remaster from Nightdive Studios that was released back in 2023.

Asif Khan

CEO/EIC/EIEIO

Asif Khan is the CEO, EIC, and majority shareholder of Shacknews. He began his career in video game journalism as a freelancer in 2001 for Tendobox.com. Asif is a CPA and was formerly an investment adviser representative. After much success in his own personal investments, he retired from his day job in financial services and is currently focused on new private investments. His favorite PC game of all time is Duke Nukem 3D, and he is an unapologetic fan of most things Nintendo. Asif first frequented the Shack when it was sCary's Shugashack to find all things Quake. When he is not immersed in investments or gaming he is a purveyor of fine electronic music. Asif also has an irrational love of Cleveland sports.