It's now been three DRM-plagued weeks since the launch of The Settlers 7. Two facts rear their unsightly heads from the public relations nightmare of the last twenty-one days: that some unhappy gamers are still unable to play the game they paid for, and that Ubisoft have failed to make any statement on the problems.

The latest update on the situation comes from a single employee willing to engage with official-forum goers, who has been on vacation.

According to a BlueByte spokesperson, the developer has been able to "unlock" accounts affected by the failure of Ubisoft's new "always-on" DRM, which left a staggering number of players unable to experience even the single-player campaign.

As the struggling spokesperson notes, the Ubisoft forums are not the official support channel for the game, but as the publisher have failed to make any official statement, press release or announcement, frustrated gamers don't know where else to turn to request assistance.

The "official" support channels are lodging a support ticket by email, or calling a paid hotline. In either case, users must await return contact, and some are reporting week-long delays to responses, or finding their support requests have been arbitrarily closed without action.

A week's wait for a reply on a fault of this scale is simultaneously par for the course and utterly unacceptable; while the sheer numbers involved must be overwhelming, in the face of a major issue like this, most companies would give up on individual responses and post regular public updates.

The lack of response and support seems even more damning in the knowledge that during the absence of one employee, there was no communication from either developer or publisher. This hardly suggests Ubisoft are taking the problem seriously; have they only assigned one guy to diffuse this situation...?

Thanks to Brian for flagging this; he says he's had very little luck with Ubisoft support. If you've got anything to share - positive or negative - let us know in the comments section. Did you experience a fault? Has it been rectified? Did you receive sufficient information?