[daft]

They are using servers running DRM software that really couldn't give a rats ass about what game it is that the server has to authenticate. All they care about is the interface the game uses to talk to the server with. That means there are no hard SHV servers that can only be used with SHV (that would be crazy) but servers that can deal with any game implementing the correct interface to talk to the server side DRM software. So in theory they can scale their server park up or down by adding more server (when they have lots of DRM-protected games on the market) or down (when they have few DRM-titles on the shelves or old games become less popular). This is most probably done with virtualization, spooling up new virtual servers as needed and shutting down others as needed. If UBI's sales decline, they will probably have to cut back on staff, but that would also mean less of a load for the authentication servers to deal with, so see it as natural selection if you will.