The OpenArena project was established on August 19, 2005, one day after the id Tech 3 source code released under GNU GPL-2.0-or-later license.

The game can be played online (against other human players) or offline (against computer-controlled characters known as bots).

OpenArena has the following gamemodes: The game is one of the most popular open-source first-person shooters, particularly among fans of the original Quake III Arena[citation needed].

[5][6] The game has been praised for its portability and ability to run on old hardware,[7] as well as creative bot design.

Some examples include streaming graphics from a central server,[8] and visualizing large amounts of network data.