A) Valve found with steam that a lot of markets (such as russia) that conventional wisdom said were closed off and no money to be made there because of piracy... well that was wrong and when valve tried, they DO make money there. Valve has talked about that topic before.
B) I'm surprised that I agree with Beamer
But it mostly doesn't matter if the piracy rate number is real or not. The only point is what your actual sales are. I see this as admitting their always on DRM has failed. If they want to go after what they perceive as lost sales, maybe now its time to try carrot strategies, instead of stick strategies that mostly hurt legitimate customers such as always on DRM. For instance, stardock gave out free updates with additional content if you had a legit serial number. If ubi did some exclusive DLC that way, they'd probably get some extra sales. DLC you couldn't have in any other way except as a reward for being a legit customer. I'm sure there's other ways to use a carrot instead of a stick.