The original design called for a simple deathmatch project with a few levels and one character model to be released the next summer.

After four years of development with no budget, Nexuiz 1.0 was released on May 31, 2005, completely under the GNU GPL, and by the end of June had over 250,000 downloads.

In the September 2006 issue of the magazine PC Gamer, Nexuiz was included in an article on Internet developers and free games impacting the industry.

Upon the release of version 2.5 in April 2009, Phoronix deemed the game to be "the best open-source first person shooter we have ever played.

The kiosks gave users 2 minutes to earn the high score by doing the most damage possible to their AI opponents.

Cities with the Challenge were: Dallas, Miami, Chicago, Boston, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

Community changes to the Nexuiz project initiated two free forks called Xonotic[3][4] and later Rexuiz.