News

Fresh off the heels of our QuakeCon visit, we had the chance to meet and hangout with the brilliant minds behind BRAZILIAN DRUG DEALER 3, the hot new Quake game that has shaken up the industry (no really!).

Joeveno, the creator and NoQuarter Software, the publisher, talked with us over the course of the event, even letting us pick at their brain for an interview. One thing we discussed with them was the idea of putting BDD3’s demo on Frag-Net so people could try it out with ease. They liked the idea so much they even entered the Matrix to talk and help us get it running.

We will be posting that interview soon, but for the meantime, BRAZILIAN DRUG DEALER 3 is now on Frag-Net and you can play it on our Arcade RIGHT NOW! What are you waiting for? That portal to hell’s not going to close itself!

Also, if you enjoy the game please give them some bucks and get a copy off Steam, [Itch.io](https://joeveno.itch.io/aviozinho-do-trfico-3abri-um-portal-pro-inferno-na-favela-tentando-reviver-tim-m], or even a DRM-Free Physical CDROM. We got one, it’s a must buy.

In addition, we have some more exciting Aracde updates to share later this month, Get Psyched!

Greetings to those we met at QuakeCon!

Last weekend was one of the greatest times we here at Frag-Net ever had. Meeting people from around the world who all had a shared passion for gaming and of course, Quake. It truly was an experience like no other. We even got to meet and talk to the elder gods of id Software themselves and met many developers from within the Quake community. Now those were our people!

We have so much to share, but it’s gonna take some time. To give you just a taste: we interviewed a handful of people from various parts of the scene, took hundreds of photos along with hours of video, watched a game being ported to DOS in real time, and of course, played Quake. We’ll put up a gallery and definitely some articles w/ interviews. Be sure to check back here and keep an eye on our YouTube.

It really was a blast, thank you everyone we met and fragged with down there, we can’t wait to see you all again. And if you didn’t go, you can meet us and tons of great people next year. We heard a rumor that even the founders would like to return too. We’ll see.

See you next year! Or hang with us in the Chat.

Yesterday Quake became the big 3 - 0. To celebrate, go play the Quake 30th Anniversary Limits Jam on whatever damn engine you want! And when you’ve still got more in you, check out the 30th Anniversary Jam which requires a modern engine.

John Romero hosted a little livestream and got other gifts from something unrelated. Today sure is like Christmas isn’t it!

Next month on the 22nd of July we’ll most likely have a proper birthday celebration in the form of some fragfest. Stay tuned in the Chat for that. We’ll also be most likely at QuakeCon in August.

See you there!

We’re now hosting an OmegA server 24/7.

It’s got votes enabled and we’ll be playing on it from now on instead of Quake III Arena. We have shut our Q3 server down as of today!

We had great memories playing Q3, but this is going to be the future of where we play. It is fully free, it has CPMA style air control in there from the get go and a collection of excellent maps.

We hope you join us and that you all throw some love and support towards Bishop-333 who’s maintaining this cool OpenArena based project!

https://www.moddb.com/mods/openarena-omega

You can find us in the server list by simply looking for frag-net as always.

We’ve also started dabbling in GTA Connected and had a nice chat with one of the developers. They seem to know what they’re doing and we like what they’re up to. But that is for another time. We’re in full gear on adding/updating some great new game pages with official support files and curated media for your viewing pleasure.

Site Updates In 2026

As hinted at in the past few Playback.dem, some changes are coming. We need to do a lot of prep and building this year.

Here’s things that we ourselves are making happen this year:

• Counter-Strike its arcade version will go live, using FreeCS (soon known as Tactical-Retreat) as its base, without the need for Half-Life content
• RetroCS, an alternative version for people who want some variety from v1.5 era CS
• Team Fortress Classic its arcade version will also go live. It’ll most likely stay limited to the free RealMedia version because we cannot distribute patch/game data from Half-Life. This game however had a fully freeware version available, which is the RealMedia version.

When will those come? Perhaps sooner than you think. We’re already building the bridge to connect to the island, so to speak.

Just Happened

We have lots of new TV broadcasts documented (+70!). Such as when you go on the Deus Ex page you can get some developer insight in the SDK video. Tbere’s also downloads documented for Crysis Wars as well as videos for Crysis 2.

You can also play Freedoom on the Arcade. It however has no multiplayer. If someone, someday, ports odamex to WebAssembly and makes it talk to our RTC broker - let us know in the Chat.

New Feature: Anti-Cheat

Want to know our stance on Anti-Cheat? Want to see us spell out the things we could do better? We’ve compiled our reasoning into one big feature all about it.

You can read the Anti-Cheat feature here and wonder about other disproportionate exchanges all around us.

New Feature: Emulation

Ever curious about games for abandoned platforms? Sure you are. We’re certain you’ve played an emulated game already. Did you know that playing those over the Internet is actually feasible these days? Even if you’re across a continent? It’s true, and we discuss that and all more on our Emulation feature right here.

One night, we were up til 4 AM playing NBA Jam Tournament Edition on SEGA Saturn emulation in mednafen. You can do that too! Please do get proper rest, as this is not healthy.

If you don’t mind playing alone, you can also emulate your own supplied ROM files at the Virtual-Console of arcade.frag-net.com!

Games Industry Woes

There’s pressing issues in the games industry. Too many to list frankly. If we could name 1 big thing it’s probably consolidation of properties within foreign entities. Foreign entities being such that they do not originate or care about games exclusively. There was a time where the C-Suite was composed more of people who played and made games.

Nowadays, even the big film-studios are often run by big entities that do millions of other things besides make hollywood movies. See MGM being owned by Amazon. And many of these entities don’t want to understand that players want handcrafted games.

Big entities will generally not listen if their focus isn’t just videogames, the math doesn’t make sense to them.

It’s probably best for everyone if they left the games industry.

Given the state of Microsoft and its Xbox Game Studios now at the mercy of people who don’t really understand gaming, and their audience having largely moved onto other platforms, we hope that their fellow sub-studios pull a Bungie and buy themselves independence before their buck stops.

Yes, we hear great promises from friends like Matt Booty, but we heard some of these bullet points years before already. Of course there’s people in there that care, especially about their livelyhoods, but their focus needs to shift elsewhere for this to work out for them. You need to do a real bold move that will gain you a lot of goodwill. Talk won’t help here. Good luck.

What the big entities will soon realize is that their well dries up, as players don’t have loyalties anymore that they once had. You saw the first sign with their live-service bets not paying off (we lost some great development houses in that purge). Remember why the SEGA Dreamcast failed with consumers: There was little trust and confidence left in that company, despite that machine and the first party line-up being incredible.

Because Valve has been consistent in their Steam service, in respecting consumers’ old purchases, never taking away people their games unless they legally had to, keeping their game-servers running - that is how they got consumers to trust them. They always knew they could not afford to screw up. Meanwhile during the past 25 years, all other major console entities - doesn’t matter if Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft - have consistently disappointed people whenever they shut down storefronts and retired platforms that people still play to this day. It’s why few invest heavily in their live service offerings. The company that won’t respect your purchase ‘forever’ should not attempt to make ‘forever games’.

We have a feeling that there’s gonna be even more restructuring, layoffs and pain ahead of us. Please support the developers you do care about. Put pressure on the big guys, have compassion for the smaller devs. Some are barely getting by right now. GDC 2026’s State of the Games Industry offers some insights into the overall pessimism.

You all know what you like, and what you want to support, so go do it!

If we can offer a word of advice: this is going to be a long winter. Patience will be rewarded, this applies to both studios struggling as well as players.

Future Of Playback.dem

We’re not going to do them like that anymore, we already said as such. It was difficult to describe the state of things without progressively getting more angry, so they’re retired for now. Go back and enjoy our past commentary.

From this point on we will focus on updates to literally every other part of the site, without the pressure of putting something out there every month. This site is meant to be a shrine for things of good, afterall.