Thing is, if they can’t monetize the game some way or another, by giving us the usual “you can earn everything by just playing” most if not every contemporary linear shooter have, I see it no way happening. Yes, we do know games nowadays are just a business by bunch of investors that run everything and determine everything developers do, see that battle royale wave everyone rides on, like every studio has a battle royale game in the works, having us thinking it is gaming really moving on from the past to the future.
In my opinion, the lack of originality, like what QW offers, is apparent enough to evaluate publishers are afraid of investing in less popular concepts. You can see that by going through Steam catalogue, there is no game that matches the signature gameplay of Quake Wars, meaning publishers have their fears of losing the appeal of gamers popular games get.
At first place Quake Wars should have been released like the older title Splash Damage has made - Wolfenstein Enemy Territory, free to play, community servers and an open game that can provide players with a good modding base, to develop different game mods.
Silly move, you might think. No,I believe it was going to be until some point, then publisher (Activision) required to get out the game as a commercial product. Matter of fact, biggest series do bigger outcome, biggest publishing companies have bigger expectations, so why releasing it free when you can double the outcome.
In the end of the day, I don’t remember why it got pulled off Steam. Then again, Brink came out on Steam again few months ago, that game is deadly dead, why not do the same and publish a patch to have the game operate under Steam’s services. Money this, money that, I suppose.
