Ubi says that they have all of the original source code, and that making a suitable update would be easy... If this was the case, why wasn't it done?
Probably because the tech support department (or whoever was responsible for pushing out the patch) wasn't following company policy. It certainly wouldn't be the first time something like that happened.
Really, what other reason could there be? The programming staff just didn't feel like building an unprotected executable that day? I don't see how it could be anything but an employee with power doing something that he/she wasn't supposed to do. That's basically the only explanation that makes any logical sense in this case.
Edit: Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that this is the right way to do it (though really, when you think about it, RELOADED
did illegally distribute a modified version of
their binary), I'm just saying that I doubt the company just went ahead and said, "RELOADED's good, right? Let's just release their crack, official-like!"