Seems DRAG from Orontes Games has been noticed as something special as iRacing has acquired the team.

Lead developers Christian Folkers and Thorsten Folkers have officially joined the iRacing team, and the statement makes it clear that DRAG will continue to be developed. Not only that, the Folkers will also be developing additional games and bring their expertise and proprietary tech to iRacing.

From the press release:

“We have been on the lookout for opportunities to strategically expand our capabilities and reach. With the release of DRAG, we saw a team with tremendous potential to help. From our first conversations we have been extremely impressed with Christian and Thorsten”, said Tony Gardner, president of iRacing. “They are extremely creative and highly skilled developers, and we are excited to have them join our talented team here at iRacing. Their addition will allow us to further enhance iRacing and position us to potentially expand our offerings in the future.”

“We are extremely excited to be joining iRacing – the proven leader in the simulated racing space”, added Christian Folkers. “iRacing and Orontes Games share many of the same development philosophies so this is a natural fit for both of us. We remain passionate about DRAG and plan to continue development and we look forward to working with the entire iRacing team as we push the company to the next level.”

Hopefully this means we will see some more exciting improvements to DRAG this year, which was one of the most promising racers we saw in 2020.

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PC Info is automatically purged if it hasn't been updated, or if you don't click the link to remain in for 2 years. This way we prevent too much stale data and don't hold onto your data for longer than required. If this is still correct and it has been a long time since you updated, you can simply click here to continue to be included . If this isn't correct, click here to go to your User Control Panel to update it!

It's that time of the year again. 2021 is nearly over after what feels like the longest year ever so let's all hope for a better 2022 shall we? COVID-19 sadly continues being a big issue worldwide, so we hope you're all staying safe.

For Linux gaming, it was quite a year with so many announcements it's been hard to keep track of it all. The Steam Deck announcement being the biggest thing to happen this year of course, followed by Easy Anti-Cheat and BattlEye updates that were quite exciting. A couple of other favourites from this year:

• November marked 7 months of Linux rising on Steam & 5 months above 1%
• Linux Foundation launches the Open 3D Engine based upon Amazon Lumberyard
• DXVK Native gets an official release to help Linux ports with Vulkan (see also: our interview with Josh )
• Faster Zombies to Steam Deck: The History of Valve and Linux Gaming

For 2022, things are going to be both exciting and scary for Linux gaming. So much hinges on how the Steam Deck launch goes and if it will be a success or not. We're still a few months away yet and no doubt Valve have plenty more upgrades for Steam and Proton up their sleeves. We've no idea when we will be able to do our own direct Steam Deck coverage, as after the delay our reservation is currently sat on Q2 2022.

We'll be taking our usual end of year holiday break so expect us to be pretty quiet for the next week or so. Time to put our own feet up, grab a controller and catch up on some gaming. We may be doing some livestreams though, so be sure to follow us on Twitch and keep an eye on our Twitter for announcements!

If you need help with Linux and / or gaming - remember to hop on over to our Forum , as answered posts get picked up by the mighty search engines whereas they don't for other popular real-time chat areas. Although we do have plenty of other places to hangout and chat to other Linux gamers like Discord , Telegram , Matrix , IRC .

A big big thank you to all readers, supporters and helpers over the last year.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Peace and Love.

If you wish to support us you can find out how here .

During the GOG Winter Sale they have another game giveaway and so you can grab the classic I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream for free right now. The giveaway lasts until December 25th at 2 PM UTC.

This is part of their Throwback Thursday series, for which they have a dedicated list of other retro delights you might want to take a look at.

As a reminder of some of the big lists GOG have for their Winter Sale:

• Local gift guides - region-based recommendations from their Community Managers
• Warm and cozy - delightful adventures to brighten any day
• Roach's recommendations - Geralt's trusty horse's own selection apparently
• Timeless Classics - come back to the roots with a page full of good old games
• Best Sellers - those that speak for themselves
• New arrivals - need I say more?
• GOG Exclusives

If you've picked up anything good in the GOG sale, do give over your recommendations in the comments. There's been a number of new deals added since we originally wrote about it for the first giveaway. GOG are also doing Flash Sales every 24 hours on their homepage.

One of the best fighting games on PC is expanding again, with the latest character getting a full DLC that's in Early Access right now with Skullgirls: Umbrella. Previously limited to an Alpha for those who have the Season Pass, this is your chance to grab the full character alone.

You will still need to opt into the Beta to access it, but now they've also pretty much finished the story mode for Umbrella too but the developers said it still need another go over some minor bits to fully finish. Check out the new trailer below, which also gives us a teaser of the next Skullgirls character to come in 2022.

Watch video on YouTube.com

I honestly wish I had the finger reflexes and brainpower to master Skullgirls. It really is a great fighting game, but like a lot of them it just feels way too difficult for my tiny brain. Can't help but appreciate the wonderful attention to the finer details that Skullgirls has though.

You can buy a copy of Skullgirls from Humble Store and Steam . The base game is currently 80% off in the Steam Winter Sale 2021.

FoundryVTT version 9 has been released, further improving many big parts of this excellent cross-platform virtual tabletop experience and it's looking awesome. Allowing you to play many wildly different game packs, with lots of officially licensed games from various developers, virtual-tabletopping is in a really good place right now.

One of the major new features of this release is support for card games, as it now has mechanics hooked up for handling Card Decks, Card Hands and Card Piles. This was of course done in a system-agnostic way, allowing game developers to make full use of it for whatever they need:

Version 9 brings support for card games to Foundry VTT. We have implemented a system-agnostic method for handling Card Decks, Card Hands, and Card Piles which can be assigned to users in your game. The Cards system brings with it everything you need to play a functional (if rudimentary) card game using the FVTT UI. More importantly, Card Support empowers game system and module developers to build upon it and offer support for a variety of card games. Card decks, hands, and piles can be created from the Cards sidebar and include support for most of the common operations a card game might require: dealing, shuffling, playing or passing cards amongst your players. We also took the time to prepare and package two default playing card decks, including custom card art for both a dark theme and a light theme.

Watch video on YouTube.com

There's also a bunch of new lighting animation types available to spice up your boards, performance improvements with new modes to pick from to help lower-end machines, a new keybinds system to further make it your own, various upgrades to the UI and audio improvements with new drag and drop features.

At $50 (plus VAT), it may seem a little on the pricey side perhaps but what it offers is quite phenomenal, especially since only the host needs to own it. Also pretty sweet that it's built on Linux — for Linux, as the developer noted before.

Check it out on the official site .

Time to explore space once again? Naev is an absolute classic. It's free, open source and it continues to mature with some more modern features available in the new 0.9 release. A space trading, combat and exploration game inspired by the likes of the Escape Velocity series.

Check out their new trailer:

Watch video on YouTube.com

Release 0.9 highlights include:

• Electronic warfare revamp with stealth and illegal cargo and outfits
• Systems have patrol routes for dominating factions
• Visual novel system for new missions with support for mini-games
• Complete rebalance and overhaul of most outfits that can have complex behaviours now
• Rehauled backgrounds, new trails, and other graphical improvements
• Lots of new content including 40 new missions

You can grab Naev free from itch.io , Steam the official site as an AppImage and Flathub (outdated at the moment).

Visit the elves with a younger audience perhaps? Looks like Watch Over Christmas could be a good family game for you.

"Watch Over Christmas is a unique Christmassy game that tells the story of a 12-year-old boy, Cisco, who is called upon to save the most beloved holiday of them all. On the night just before Christmas, an unexpected visitor will inform him that Santa has been abducted and that he is the only hope of saving Christmas as we know it. Cisco will jump on a quest through numerous fun and challenging puzzles to preserve the magic of the Holidays."

Watch video on YouTube.com

Game Features:

• Classic 2D point and click style.
• A unique story within one night, the night before Christmas.
• Fun and challenging mini-game puzzles.
• 60+ beautiful hand-drawn environments.
• Original soundtrack.

Available to buy on Steam .

A fresh new release of Manjaro Linux is out now bringing with it tons of enhancements. Manjaro 21.2.0 Qonos comes in multiple editions with KDE Plasma, GNOME and Xfce desktops available.

This is a Linux distribution based-on Arch Linux, and it's one that Valve actually recommends to developers for testing to get ahead of the game for the upcoming Steam Deck handheld (as long as you go for the Plasma edition, since it matches SteamOS 3's desktop mode).

What's new in Manjaro 21.2?

Featuring Kernel 5.15 LTS as the standard, with 5.4 LTS and 5.10 LTS offered for those who need them for whatever reason, like perhaps some older hardware. There's "major" improvements to their installer named Calamares, with automatic partitioning and enhanced support for the btrfs filesystem.

Each edition got major upgrades for the various desktops like GNOME 41.2, which Manjaro now has a layout that more closely follows upstream defaults with a few minor adjustments. Firefox here also now has a different theme to better fit with GNOME. The Plasma edition got bumped up to Plasma 5.23, KDE Frameworks 5.88 and Applications 21.12. The default Plasma theme went through some polishing to fit closer to upstream's Breeze too. On top of that the Xfce edition is now with Xfce 4.16 that has plenty of window manager improvements for those of you who like the more classic desktop look.

Pictured - Manjaro KDE, my testing.

Manjaro is a rolling-release, meaning it just keeps updating when available. These "releases" are, essentially, just a refresh of the main installer downloads.