This statement was made by Ubisoft's director of subscriptions, Phillipe Tremblay, who recently spoke to Gamesindustry.biz about the digital future and Ubisoft Plus specifically. Tremblay states that people eventually "got comfortable" with not owning their CD or DVD collections, and that a similar shift in attitude "needs to happen" in gamers.
The push to live services, online DRM, microtransactions, DLC and other such things is because they have identified that there is more money to be made as a 'server operator' than a 'game developer.'
They don't really care about getting paid for the game, they'd rather give it away for free if they can make more money off controlling the servers.
Exactly. This is only about finding the most effective way to suck the most amount of money from the gaming market.