FYI, I just read the much delayed test of another title using the Ubisoft OSP-DRM. Since it touches present issues with SHV, I thought I ought to mention it here (sorry, German, but I summarize the core).
http://www.tomshardware.de/Assassins...-240520-5.html
It is the test of Assassins Creed II by the German magazine Tom's Hardware, whose international partner sites most of you probably know. It thus far has been a credible source of information and their articles is also pretty fact-based, not emotional. The gauge the game "excellent" in types of game features and novelty (does still use the older game engine, using DX9, but that did not lower the rating as an overall product), but due to DRM they conclude it has already wasted its potential to become a new classic in the first week. They end up questioning whether one should buy this product in this case.
What is more important is their statement regarding the OSP-DRM server issues of the weekend of the 6/7th of March, as well as intermittend outages thereafter.
According to their information it was NOT a DDOS attack, but just a combination of badly tested and designed OSP servers and a planned server maintaince on these dates. They cite information to back this up and point to the fact that the login issues occured only to peak gaming times, also during the next week, which they tested, too. Finally they have a statement from a person maintaining the servers who stated not to have noticed any kind of attack.
They have requested and official statement from Ubisoft regarding their problem of "unplayability" at certain times, but Ubisoft did not take a position and reply. I spare you the rest of the conclusions they drew from the OSP strategy.
I really do not support piracy, for many reasons including skewing a companys' sense of whether legal customers don't buy because of bad products or pirating, but what again is the definition of "pirates"? And what kind of information policy does Ubisoft follow again?
It is so easy to blame them, isn't it? Kind of slaves, guilty by nature, you don't even need to proof it anymore?
PS. They also tested the crack and it was fully functional even after patching... So far about Ubisoft's new strategy -- if it was purely an anti-piracy measure, then I would say it was an epic fail that cost them dearly so far.