Acknowledging that the Dead or Alive fighting franchise has a sexy image problem, community leaders at the series' go-to forum have added an over-sexualized costume soft-ban to their tournament rules. Reactions from the community-at-large have been overwhelmingly negative.

Secondhand smoke is terrible, but good luck getting away from it when you visit an internet cafe in China. In recent years, restrictions on smoking have been passed on locations such as restaurants and net cafes, but even so, people still smoke. Now, in China's city of Wuhan, the authorities are cracking down.

Fans really like making stuff based on the games they love. We feature fan-made videos, costumes, artwork, and more here at Kotaku pretty much every day. The companies that make the games that fans love, though, are not exactly always eager to see third parties profiting off of their copyrighted work.

A man who applies a particular mental skill to play Blackjack, counting cards, will eventually find security standing behind him, strongly suggesting he vacate the premises, when someone working for the casino figures out what he is doing.

Video game developers take great care in creating rules and restrictions that define the gameplay of their virtual worlds, but sometimes those rules aren't good enough. In today's rule-breaking edition of Speak Up on Kotaku, commenter Pibbles explores the joy of playing under your own self-imposed strictures.

Few sports implement rule changes as frequently as the NFL, but they're often subtle. This year the league made a major change to its playoff overtime procedure and, as expected, Madden NFL 11 will reflect that.

Word from the Scrabble makers at Mattel is that proper nouns will be fair game for Scrabble players as of this summer. [UPDATE: Not so fast concerning this "rule change."]