Folks at Bethesda have announced that bots will be removed from matchmade games in Quake Champions, on 26 July 2018. This change should arrive at the same time with the Skill Rating reset and is first in line of more changes to bots.
Bethesda and id Software have finally fulfilled the wishes of many players who have been asking for bots to be removed from matchmaking for a long time. In essence, it's probably not the developers' inability or lack of interest that was responsible for bots overstaying their welcome.
Quake Champions has had a rough time finding an audience ever since it was added on Steam Early Access in August 2017. If there are no players, there can be no matches. Technically, the game was never completely barren, but player numbers were rather slim for a long time.
Bethesda hasn't managed to get more than 1.000 concurrent players on average for almost a year, up until they rolled out a giveaway in June 2018. It was at this time that Quake Champions finally found some players that stuck with it and now averages at around . With greater player numbers come many matches and bots can be ditched.
Now, this would present major issues for novice players as the bots are the punching bags where new players learn to walk, or in this case bunny hop and shoot during high octane action. Bethesda and id Software thought of this too and while the bots will get the boot for the moment, they will be reintroduced in different modes that will allow players to practice on them.
Bethesda
There are currently to add bot support in Custom Games for training purposes, better AI for bots that are more of a challenge and a separate 4v4 co-op mode where a human team will be able to face off against a team comprised of bots. These bot changes and upgrades are expected to land at some point in August 2018.
