Quake 5 Was In Development But Canceled A Decade Ago

I've always wondered what happened to Quake franchise. Sure, we've had the multiplayer only Quake Champions, but what about those mainline entries, many with single-player aspects (except for Quake III Arena)? Well, the interesting news is that Quake 5 (the 6th Quake game), was in development at some point...but got canceled.

That's according to Dr. Hingis, and retweeted by a known industry insider who goes by the name of AestheticGamer aka Dusk Golem. The game was apparently in development at ID Software for a rather long period, moving on and off development during both the RAGE and original DOOM 4 production times.

However, Quake 5 was canceled during the development of DOOM 2016, which places the game's cancellation around one decade ago. That's according to Dr. Hingis on X, who shared some screenshots!

Quake 5 was in development at Id on & off during the development of both Doom 4 (1.0), RAGE and Cancelled during the development of Doom 2016. A while ago I stumbled across a website of a current Id employee who uploaded some of their work on the project onto their gallery. pic.twitter.com/Lc5QRaSCqU

— Dr. Hingis (@Dr_Hingis) May 14, 2025

The screenshots are apparently from a current ID Software employee, who uploaded some of the work. At the time of writing, we couldn't find the precise website, so take this information with a grain of salt.

It remains to be seen if the next Quake game will ever see the light of day. It would be weird, however, if Microsoft and Bethesda just sit on the IP forever, so I, for one, believe we will one day see a new Quake game emerge. Until then, stay strogg!