Quake III Arena on q3.pieter.com

Verdict: q3.pieter.com runs Quake III Arena deathmatch in a browser tab, with no install and no game files of your own. It runs on Q3JS, a WebAssembly build of ioquake3, and uses id Software’s free demo data. The site says it supports phones and gamepads. On 2026-10-17 it was up, with 30 names (humans and bots) in the player list. It is an unofficial fan project, so the play button opens the original site in a new tab.

What it is

Quake III Arena (1999) dropped the single-player story of earlier Quakes and was built almost entirely around multiplayer arena combat: jump pads, rocket jumps, the railgun and maps like q3dm17 “The Longest Yard”. id Software released the engine source under the GPL in 2005, and ioquake3 has kept it maintained ever since. The game’s art and maps are still commercial, apart from the demo that id gave away.

Q3JS, made by Luka Klacar, compiles ioquake3 to WebAssembly with Emscripten. Because browsers cannot send raw UDP packets, a gateway turns the browser’s WebSocket traffic into the normal Quake III network protocol for a dedicated server. Game data is cached in the browser so later visits load faster. Q3JS runs its own server list at q3js.com; q3.pieter.com is one server with its own front page.

How q3.pieter.com started

Pieter Levels wrote on 16 March 2026 that he had revived a Quake III server he first ran in 2019, when friends played the free fork OpenArena together until a Mac update broke it. This time he used Q3JS so nobody has to install anything. He also added browser notifications for when enough people are online, and a daily match at 20:00 GMT.

What the front page shows

• The number of players online and their names, with bots marked separately.
• The current map and the next map with a countdown. When we checked, the map was 13vast and q3dm1 was next.
• Top players by kills for 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days and all time.
• A button to turn on notifications.

Requirements

• A recent browser. Desktop Chrome or Edge give the smoothest result; the site also offers touch controls for phones.
• Keyboard and mouse, a gamepad or a touch screen.
• No game files: the demo data is loaded for you on first visit.

Is it safe and legal?

• It is an unofficial, non-commercial fan project, not affiliated with id Software or ZeniMax.
• The data comes from the officially released demo, and the engine is GPL-licensed ioquake3.
• The full game with all its maps is sold on Steam.

Not working?

• Long first load: wait for the data download; it is cached afterwards.
• Bad ping: there is one server, so players far from it will feel lag. Q3JS lists other servers on its own site.
• Touch controls do not respond: reload the page; if it still fails, use a desktop browser.
• If it is down, try QuakeWorld, Quake II or Urban Terror on the same platform.

Unofficial. This page is written by an independent directory. It is not made by, endorsed by or affiliated with id Software (Activision) or Pieter Levels (pieter.com), engine port Q3JS by Luka Klacar (@lukathedev) (Quake III Arena on q3.pieter.com's author). We do not host any files, and we never link to game files, ROMs or ISOs.