There's no way they missed the negative publicity leading up to the launch. They were trying really, really hard to not let this happen, but there we have it.
Internet: 1 Ubisoft: 0.
Internet: 1 Ubisoft: 0.
Internet: 2 Ubisoft: 0
The internet scored its first point when the DRM was cracked almost immediately. This second failure is just going to motivate everyone, even those who actually bought the game, to download a torrented copy of the cracked version.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ubisoft-drm-internet-assass...
I'm inclined to think it's not completely cracked. I played a little with the network traffic and it's definitely encrypted/signed. Also one of the gnomes in the office had a go at reverse engineering it and as far as he's got so far he says it is pretty solidly done.
1) Many refuse to buy the game ONLY because of the DRM.
2) DRM Servers Crash
3) Game cracked almost immediately after launch.
4) Legitimate users download the crack.
Point 4 is awesome. I think Ubi should be sued because a legit user HAD to crack the game to play it with a bad internet connection / servers down, and got a virus, and sue ubi for the damages.
I've also notice games screw with the process priorities by confusing windows. The autoplay (which contains the DRM programs) gets priority over the actual game, you then have to CAD to set the priority for the actual game.