Here’s a roundup of today’s news found elsewhere on the internet:

Denial of Service Attack Kills Ubisoft DRM, Your Assassin's Creed II Playtime (Kotaku) - The downtime that plagued PC gamers trying to play Assassin's Creed II yesterday was the result of a denial-of-service attack, causing one of Ubisoft's new DRM-servers to become unreachable. But hey, at least no one has hacked the game yet.

Ubisoft's controversial new digital rights management solution went gone live for both Assassin's Creed II and Silent Hunter V this weekend, only to go dead for a large number of users shortly thereafter. The DRM system requires users be connected to the internet while playing the game in order for it to function, and many players reported not being able to connect to Ubisoft, which meant they were not able to play.

Hacking attacks on Ubisoft's new DRM system were hardly unexpected, considering it has already been attacked on a regular basis by fans and critics.

While it may still be alienating players, at least the DRM is getting the job it was intended to perform done, as Ubisoft's Twitter proudly proclaims.

"We're happy to say ACII & SH5 are withstanding the efforts to crack them. We see the rumors but still confirm no valid cracked versions exist."

I'm sure all of the people who were desperately trying to play Assassin's Creed II yesterday are pleased as punch.

XBL rule change allows users to express race, sexual orientation (gamesindustry.biz) - Microsoft has amended its Xbox Live terms of use, allowing users to express their race, nationality, religion and sexual orientation, if they choose, in their Gamertags and profiles.

Xbox Live GM Marc Whitten said the move had been made in response to feedback from customers who had felt excluded from the community, adding that the company's original stance had a arisen from a desire to protect its users from abuse.

"The Xbox Live Terms of Use and Code of Conduct are designed to create a place where people can safely enjoy all of the ways to interact on our service, be it online multiplayer gaming, photo sharing, Netflix parties, or social games such as 1 vs 100, without fear of discrimination or harassment," said Whitten, in an open letter published on Xbox.com.

"As the service evolves and our customers provide us with feedback, these rules evolve to incorporate new features or changes in how people wish to interact.

"With that in mind, I'd like to announce an update to the Xbox Live Terms of Use and Code of Conduct which will allow our members to more freely express their race, nationality, religion and sexual orientation in Gamertags and profiles.

"Under our previous policy, some of these expressions of self-identification were not allowed in Gamertags or profiles to prevent the use of these terms as insults or slurs. However we have since heard feedback from our customers that while the spirit of this approach was genuine, it inadvertently excluded a part of our Xbox Live community."

Microsoft said that the update will happen alongside increased stringency and enforcement to prevent the misuse of its terms.

"I truly believe that our diversity is what makes us strong: diversity in gaming and entertainment options, and diversity in the people that make up this amazing community," Whitten added.

Why Modern Video Game Armies Lack Female Troops (Kotaku) - Women have been serving admirably in warzones for the U.S. military for about a decade. But they're absent from the ranks of modern video game armies. A game developer offered Kotaku a justification of why we virtually fight as men.

The answer, offered by Gordon Van Dyke, producer of the new Electronic Arts modern warfare game Battlefield: Bad Company 2, has to do with technology. Or, more specifically, it has to do with technology needs trumping any sense of consumer demand for representation of both genders.
Programming women soldiers into a virtual war just might not be worth the costs to the game and the servers that connect the people playing it.

The topic came up on last week's Kotaku podcast, when I asked Van Dyke if there were women in Bad Company 2. I'd noticed that the games I'd played set in modern or near-future settings were almost always fought by men and men only.

"There's no girls in our game," he said around the 33-minute mark.

"It's an interesting thing, though because … It's fun that you bring that up because I can kind of give some insight into development and how games are made. When you actually put in female characters, typically you have to put in an entire new skeleton model and that entire new skeleton model adds an entire new level of animation and an entire new level of rigging. You basically double the amount of data and memory for soldiers that would need to go into your game.

"So it turns into one of those things that's like: How much will putting something like this in give us, whether the rewards of putting something like this in [are worth it]. The reward has to match what you have to give up somewhere else. Our games are pushing the edge of the system they're on at such a high degree that it becomes more of a balancing act for implementing new things — how many vehicles you can have in a game or how many buildings with destruction — because every single one of those things needs to be calculated by the server and transmitted to every single play that's playing the game. Every time you shoot a building or wall, they [need] to see it when it happens or, if you go past that, at a later date, the server needs to remember that data and then transmit it to all those players."

Shameless Subliminal World Of Warcraft Advertising Discovered In Gnomeregan (Kotaku) - The Matrix Puncograph in World of Warcraft's Gnomeregan has been spitting out pro-WoW propaganda for years, right under our noses! Master of Warcraft translates the binary cards, revealing the advertisements, secret love affairs, and a strange fascination with Natalie Portman.

 
Snippets: Why there are no women in BFBC2, WoW’s hidden binary ads

Blizzard loves sneaking pop culture references into World of Warcraft, so it comes as no surprise that the binary punch cards players receive from the Data Rescue quest in the Gnomish homeland of Gnomeregan are rife with such references.

The messages on the punch cards range from silly scrawlings like "Thrall and Jaina sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G," to advertisements such as "Tell your friends to play WoW," and "Play more WoW," likely a references to the "Drink More Ovaltine" gag from the classic film A Christmas Story.

My favorite hidden message of the lot is the not-so-cryptic "Natalie Portman Rocks." I tend to agree, and having it spelled out in binary makes the message so much more sincere.

Check out Master of Warcraft for an exhaustive look at the secrets hidden deep within Gnomeregan's punch card machines.