Is that truth or fiction btw?
I subscribed to gamesurge. Tried a few IRC clients -chatzilla, bersirc and kvirce. They all had issues connecting to gamesurge IRC.
Chatzilla can't do the authserv thingi
bersirc can't be configured to authserv
kvirc looks the best so far but fails to connect as well.
Clearly it's my lack of experience with IRC at work here

I'll try again tomorrow, maybe I'll have better luck.
Thanks for the pointers I'll check them as well.