Sports games are quite popular these days, substituting for many the need for sports, but also offering many fans the opportunity to lead their favorite athletes or teams to victory in various competitions. Also, the fact that you can beat other opponents in online matches and thus prove your superior skills is a major feature for any sports game.

One of the most popular titles this summer is THQ's UFC 2009: Undisputed, which tackles the Mixed Martial Arts competition and lets players choose just what famous fighters they can control and prove their skills to everyone. But even though the title has registered some big sales, it isn't without its faults.

As such, the company announced that a new patch for the title would be available for download worldwide for the Xbox 360 and across Europe for the PlayStation 3, as it was still in the approval process at Sony Computer Entertainment America.

Among a lot of fixes to the stability of the game, it will also enable better support for online matches and will address the fact that many people disconnect from matches when they are losing, without getting any penalty for such unfair behavior. Here are some of the most important things added by this patch.

“- Online matches will better support issues with users who leave a match. The game will now detect users who disconnect and will assign a “Loss,” as well as a “Did Not Finish (DNF),” to that player. The DNF is only assigned to the player who executes the disconnection. The DNF rate will be displayed on the fighter selection screen of the “Online Ranked Match.” When disconnected, the “Winning Streak” is also reset to zero. 
- Ranked Matches have been adjusted to match players with better connections.
- The difficulty of performing submissions against computer opponents has been adjusted to improve the balance of submissions vs. striking.
- The Flash Knockouts rate has been adjusted so they are less frequent. 
- The maximum number of points awarded in online play has been increased from 99,999 to 999,999. The “Max Level” has also been increased from 100 to 200.
- The “Winning Streak” bonus maximum has been moved from 5 to 3.
- Decimal places on the “Leader Board Winning Percentage” have been changed so that only whole percentages are shown. 
- Create-a-Fighter (CAF) issues have been addressed so that the skill levels in CAF cannot be cheated and increased. Also, any CAF with unfair point values will no longer be able to be used online.
- For PlayStation 3 system users, game freezes during auto-saves have been eliminated. The controller used to “Press Start” on the title screen will be identified as the main controller.

Overall, the game will certainly benefit from this patch, so you'd better start up your game and download it when you are prompted.