Gaming News

DFC now has its own Youtube channel, primarily for game captures from Friday nights. There are playlists per game, currently including CS:GO, PUBG, GRID and Assetto Corsa. Head over to Youtube and get subscribed!

Yup, that's right - we're planning a physical BobLAN later this year! Covid permitting, it is due to start Thursday 23rd September and run until the Sunday. Assuming it all goes ahead, you can follow the schedule on the usual BobLAN page.

It's quite fitting that DFC should get a new outfit just before its birthday. Also great to see that many of the original QW squad are still playing on Friday nights alongside all our newer members. Long may it continue!

Date voting for QWAN (not WANQ as some wanted) has now closed, and the selected weekend is Thursday 17th to Saturday 19th June. More information regarding games to follow nearer the time, and you'll be able to follow the event on the QWAN page

Massive thanks to Trebz and Bean for some amazing graphics work. We now have a new DFC fox logo and header image, plus a few tweaks to the CSS here and there. They will also make their way onto all our social channels over the coming days!

A new HLStatsX website is up and running which is always-on (the previous one was only up when the CS:GO server was up)

The new location is hlstatsx.desertfoxclan.com

Our second WAN event of the year, this time organised by Mr Fox, starts tomorrow afternoon. It will see the usual mix of FPS, driving and board games, along with the now obligatory Pup-Quiz.

One new feature this time will the CS:GO stats, courtesy of Pup. When the CS:GO server is running, the stats will be here: DFC HLStats

Virtus.pro and Gambit make it through to the semi finals at the expense of Astralis and NAVI respectively. Semis start tomorrow at 2pm.

Update 1: both teams from the lower group stage bracket have made it through to the final - Virtus.pro beating Liquid and Gambit beating Spirit. The final will be best of five, and starts at 2pm ON Sunday 28th February.

Update 2: Gambit took the final by 3 rounds to 1. Beating NAVI, Spirit and Virtus.pro in the finals was no easy task - well deserved!

Nvidia's mid-range card in the 3000 series launches today at 5pm GMT. Chances of getting one: nil.

The group stages of this year's IEM tournament are now complete, and all the usual suspects have made it through to the playoff stages. Team Spirit and Team Liquid are straight through to the semi finals, whereas Astralis, Virtus.pro, Navi and Gambit enter at the quarter final stage.

View the full standings on the IEM website

The next virtual LAN party of the year, FoxWAN, will run from 25th-27th March 2021. Follow the build-up in Discord, and the event schedule on the FoxWAN page.

The Intel Extreme Masters event, usually held at the Spodek arena in Katowice, will take place this month. Preliminaries start on 16th Feb, with the Group Stage on 18th-21st Feb and the Playoffs from 26th-28th Feb. Teams will play on a LAN but sadly there will be no audiences. More details to follow as the tournament begins...

Normally I do a short writeup of what we played, what went well, what we ate etc. This time I think I will hand over to the guys who gave some great comments in the Discord channel at the end of the event:

• eddier1981: "Thanks very much guys, had a good time, glad I made it for my first pup quiz, that was a good laugh. When we get back to normal bobslans I will be bringing my pimp coat (dressing gown)"
• Pup: "Well played @trebz for a great event! Apologies for leaving early and not helping with tidy up - promise I’ll help next time. Great mix of games... some classics, some new and some new mods for classics. So...DazWan in April?"
• Bynar: "Some great gaming this weekend, BF1 last night stands out to me, some really tight balanced matches with good numbers! You should have suggested it sooner @Russcky. Great bantz as always, let's get another in the diary."
• Russcky: "@Bynar really good games as much as I’m hated for it haha. @DBoy I’ll use base guns just for you next time :) I think the key to BF1 is numbers ideally we want a 6v6 or more for it to work well"
• Lynx: "the numbers for BF1 yesterday were great, and was quite well balanced really. Great to catch up with everyone after such a 'long time no see' :)"
• Trebz: "Aye great weekend as always chaps. Cheers for the quiz pup!"
• AngryDaz: "Thoroughly enjoyable. Well done everyone!"
• DBoy: "Amazing weekend as usual, great games, great bantz, great fun... thanks @Russcky appreciate that, sure it will make all the difference :)"
• Wozani: "aye, great to see you all :)"
• Fox: "Thanks for organising @trebz, top work on the quiz @Pup and nice work on the racing front from @EvilGoblin. And a big thank you to everyone for providing something positive to focus on when the world seems to be in need of a hard reboot or at least a couple of targeted Alt+F4s! :wink: As discussed in the early hours today, only @Lynx really has the infrastructure and processes in place to host these events with the level of professionalism that we expect (and deserve?!?!) and whilst @Pup and @trebz have done a tremendous job in stepping up and organising additional events to fill the calendar it would be unfair to expect them to do so again so quickly. However as things stand having something to look forward to - aside from our numbers in the vaccine queue (spoiler alert: @Lynx is the bookies favourite :)) is very important - so I'm happy to announce that the next event will be BobLAN BobWAN PupWAN DanWAN FoxWAN! Dates to be agreed/announced in due course but March/April time should allow us to all put in the hard yards and garner sufficient brownie points with wives/partners to allow for us to "slip away" for the weekend. Obviously we need to play things by ear at present but it's likely that we'll still be in "lockdown" by then, so I'm already looking forward to some more lockdown haircuts - although @NooNoo22's put down a strong marker for everyone already :). I'll keep you posted and obviously we'll have plenty of time to chat during our regular Friday night (and Monday race sessions?)."

The first remote BobLAN of the year starts today, otherwise known as DanWAN. Follow the latest developments on the DanWAN page, where you'll find the schedule and links to social and the photo gallery.

The event turned out to be an announcement of the RTX3060 for release late February, some new mobile chipsets and a raft of games that will be supporting the RTX platform (ray tracing, DLSS and the Reflex latency reduction technology). Nothing about Ti or Super models for the RTX3070 or RTX3080 to bridge the gaps, nor anything concrete about improving supply of existing cards. Meh

Nvidia have a Special Broadcast Announcement scheduled for today at 5pm GMT. Not sure what's in it - probably something else that nobody can buy.

Watch the event here.

The long-awaited dystopian RPG Cyberpunk 2077 went on general release overnight. The story-based FPS by the studio behind the Witcher series has been delayed a few times, and with a few launch day bugs, expect some hefty patches to follow. There are reports of some performance issues and glitches, but these should be sorted out fairly quickly.

You will need a powerful PC to get the best out of it - a 3070 or better is a must as DLSS is required to max out the settings at 60fps or more.

There are plenty of trailers and gameplay clips on the game's Youtube channel

The first virtual LAN party of 2021 will start on Thursday 21st January, and run through to the early house of Sunday morning. Expect more updates nearer the time via @boblan on Twitter, and on our DanWAN 2021.1 page.

It's been a while since we covered a PUBG update, but patch 9.2 seems quite an interesting one. The main features are a new vehicle - the Dirt Bike, but the one that will change how players use vehicles is the ability to fire a sidearm as a driver. Only pistols plus the sawed-off can be fired by the driver, and there are limitations on the arc of fire if there are any passengers in the vehicle, but it's a welcome feature.

In addition to the above, there are a bunch of gameplay changes, bug fixes and map updates.

There is a full writeup on Shacknews

The next virtual BobLAN will start around lunchtime on Thursday 22nd October, and end late Saturday night/Sunday morning. Follow the schedule and social via the BobWAN 2020.3 page.