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Day of Defeat approaches

Firm date from Valve.

Day of Defeat: Source, the Half-Life 2 engine reworking of popular World War II-based Half-Life modification Day of Defeat, will be released on September 26th, says Valve.

The game will start preloading via content download service Steam in the next week or so as Valve gets ready to "throw the switch" – preloading, of course, sees games quietly downloaded to users' hard disks in encrypted form so that it can be playable as soon as it's released. It's a system that worked very well for Half-Life 2.

Dedicated server administrators will also be given some time to sort matters out ahead of the September 26th date.

Valve, ever keen supporters of the mod community, also took the opportunity to promote TRON/Matrix-esque Half-Life 2 mod Dystopia, which is available right now, so we'll do the same. Have done in fact.

Another thing to remember is that Lionhead programmer Mark Healey's cute little mouse-based martial arts knockabout, Rag Doll Kung Fu, is set to launch on Steam sometime in the near future. We've played it and it's... quite fascinating.

We'll let you know when DoD: Source and RDKF are out. Both will be made available for a standalone purchase, and DoD: Source is free to all Half-Life 2 Silver and Gold subscribers.

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