I thought that the big drm issue was that the game saves on ubisoft's servers vs your harddrive.

To me that in itself is very unappealing, but that is what is "missing" from the game. If that has been cracked already then that just goes to show that good DRM can at best delay cracking the game, meanwhile there is a saying "Whenever DRM prevents a customer willing to buy the game form buying it, a pirate gets his wings"