Gaming News

Reminder that the Intel Extreme Masters event in Cologne starts on Wednesday 26th July. Follow it in the usual places: Twitter and Twitch (note the new channel names - ESLCS rather than ESL_CSGO)

A major update to Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 has introduced a number of changes to the game, some controversial, some welcome, and along with it serious performance issues.

As usual with a CoD update, weapon stats have been updated with a few improved (eg the shotguns) and several nerfed (eg the ISO 45). Other major changes are in the plea system, map rotations and the introduction of the MX Guardian auto shotgun.

There are plenty of sources for the patch notes but here's a good read on dexerto.

The Steam Summer Sale is now on. Head over to the Steam Store to grab yourself a game costing slightly less than RRP!

Tomorrow sees the start of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, Season 4. The new season introduces a new map (Vondel, sized somewhere between Al Mazrah and Ashika) along with new weapons and changes to gameplay, storage, money etc. There are far too many changes to list here, so head over to callofduty.com for a roundup, or watch one of Stodeh's or Westie's videos for a gamer's perspective.

The playoffs for the Intel Extreme Masters CS:GO event in Dallas start later today. The ESL Twitter account will provide full coverage and you can watch live on Twitch.

We now have some details about the upcoming Nvidia RTX4060 series launch that starts later this month. There will be three flavours - 4060, 4060Ti (8GB) and 4060Ti (16GB). The Founders Editions will not include the 16GB Ti model, meaning you will only be able to get this from AIB manufacturers. Pricing will be equivalent to prices the the same models in the previous two generations, which is good news.

You can read all about the RTX4060 series at Nvidia and watch JayzTwoCents cover the news in his own unique style!

Here are a couple of videos from 3kliksphilip highlighting some of the interesting additions in CS2 and comparing features to CS:GO. Some are fairly benign but others will impact gameplay substantially.

Here are the links to the first and second videos in this series so far.

Another BobLAN is over and if anyone else feels the way I do, you will have gone from childlike excitement before to abject dispair after :)

What a LAN though?! In terms of numbers this one is up there with the best attended - we had 19 playing CS:GO on Friday, followed by 20 taking part in the Pup Quiz. Amazing! Bob confirmed that we had 15 people staying over plus the locals who walked there each day and a few joining remotely.

In terms of the games played, the new kid on the block was Call of Duty Warzone 2 - great fun but not many can play at once. Of the regular games, CS:GO did well, as did Wreckfest and the GRIDs. We also played some PUBG, Battlefield 1 and 2042, Titanfall 2 and Team Fortress 2. There was no Back4Blood, Left4Dead or Rockband this time. Outside of gaming, we did watch all of the coverage of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix over the course of the weekend. View the full schedule on our BobLAN page.

Food was the usual excellent standard, particularly the breakfasts, Thursday curry/chilli and Friday pulled pork, and for the first time in a while all takeaway food was present and correct! Not only was the food great, BobLAN Premium customers could also take advantage of the new PC cleaning service :)

As usual, huge thanks to Bob and Lynda for hosting us and giving us the ability to meet up and keep in touch with each other - very much appreciated by all!

The first day went way too quickly, and the big hit was Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 Warzone 2 - the free-to-play squad-based FPS. Other games to feature included CS:GO (of course), PUBG and Wreckfest. The full schedule is available on the BobLAN page and on Discord.

BobLAN 2023.1 is officially underway. Early setup was last night and the majority of gamers have started arriving today!

This should be a bank holiday! It is 25 years to the day that a bunch of geeks gathered round desks in Tech Support and decided to form a QuakeWorld clan to take the MCW by storm. That part didn't exactly go to plan, but thanks to LAN parties first at Reubs' house, then chez-Bob and more recently on Pup's AWS servers, we have stayed together as a group, and even grown as the next generation has come on board.

Will we still be having BobLANs in another 25 years time? Who knows!

It is now only one week to BobLAN 2023.1. Safe travels to all those attending, and those joining remotely will be able to keep up via the usual channels - Discord, Twitter and our dedicated BobLAN page.

Today sees the worldwide launch of the Nvidia RTX4070. The starting price, presumably for the Founders Edition, is £589 - midway between the RTX3070 and RTX3080. If you want to see benchmarks, watch this video on JayzTwoCents - it shows the 4070 beating the 3080 at lower resolutions but lagging a little behind at 1440p and above. However, as more games support DLSS version 3 then the 4070 is likely to jump ahead.

Another important factor in current times is power draw, and amazingly the RTX4070 uses a lot less power than the previous generation. This is covered towards the end of Jay's video.

If you want the official take on the card and technology is utilises, read Nvidia's article covering the release.

With BobLAN fast approaching, it makes sense to use the new feature that was added to the Steam Client last month - file transfers over LAN. To enable it, open up Steam settings, select Download and set the Game File Transfer setting to Steam Friends:

The Counter-Strike community has announced that the major tournaments will switch from CS:GO to CS2 from March 2024. Exciting times! See CS2 on the Twitter

It's only six weeks to the first BobLAN of 2023 - get those upgrades done! The BobLAN page is up and counting down!

The finals of IEM Katowice start today at the quarter final stage, continuing through to Sunday's grand final. Follow the results on the Twitter and watch live on Twitch.

For those who follow pro CS:GO, here are the planned majors for 2023:

• Katowice: Feb 10th - 12th
• Brazil: Apr Apr 17th - 23rd
• Dallas: Jun 2nd - 4th
• Cologne: Aug 4th - 6th
• TBC: Oct 16th - 22nd

The best way to follow these events in on the IEM Twitter, and of course we'll provide updates here.

It has come to light that as a result of Russia's war in Ukraine, the Russian developer of MSI Afterburner has not been paid for almost a year, putting the whole project in jeopardy.

Afterburner is not written by MSI itself, but rather by a third party developer who gets paid by MSI to support the software and put their name on it. He also develops and supports Riva Tuner Stats Server (RTSS) but that has never been officially linked to MSI, despite it being bundled with Afterburner.

If you want to adjust low level driver settings for Nvidia graphics cards, Afterburner is pretty much your only option. Without it, things like undervolting and overclocking would not be possible - this is a big deal if it stops being supported and ends up being incompatible with future Nvidia drivers.

For more info, watch the full JayzTwoCents video on youtube.

Our Server Instructions page has been updated to capture the steps required to create a private PUBG server. This has proved popular both at the last LAN and also on Friday nights when there are more than four players. Once you've created a server for a given set of options you can save the config, making it really quick to create future servers.