The Quake 3 engine is open source. The Quake III: Arena game itself is not free. You must purchase the game to use the data and play Quake 3 with ioquake3. If you do not want to do that you can play another game made with ioquake3.
Please read the Player’s Guide for help getting started with ioquake3
You can download an ioquake3 build for:
This is the main Windows Build.
Your settings, screenshots, and other files will be located in C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Roaming\Quake3\ when you use ioquake3.
You may see a warning message from Windows smart screen similar to this one:
Windows protected your PC
Windows Defender SmartScreen prevented an unrecognized app from starting. Running this app might put your PC at risk.
That message can be safely ignored. We are working to resolve this issue. Please see this link for technical details.
This is the main macOS build link, we also have extra builds from developer Tom Kidd:
- Legacy Universal 1 Build for PowerPC, Intel 32-bit and Intel 64-bit
- Universal 2 Build for Intel 64-bit and Apple Silicon (M1)
Your settings, screenshots, and other files will be located in /Users/YOURNAME/Library/Application Support/Quake3/ when you use ioquake3.
If your Mac is newer than 2008, you should probably run the Universal 2 Build as it has been signed and notarized. You will see a dialog on the first run, since macOS has detected that you downloaded it from the Internet. This dialog is normal and expected.
You may need to right-click (or hold down the ctrl/control key on the keyboard and click) to access a menu and select “Open” to open the app. We are working to resolve this issue. Please see this link for technical details.
This is the main Linux build.
Your settings, screenshots, and other files will be located in ~/.q3a/ when you use ioquake3.