Further investigation by our WGA team has brought to light more information on the WGA validation issue affecting users this past weekend. Alex Kochis on the WGA blog breaks down the events of the weekend that caused the validation failure, how it was identified and what was done to fix it, and changes we've made to WGA as a result. The upshot is that we're working to improve WGA, having learned much from this failure, and the team, with Alex in the lead, is taking the matter and its impact very seriously.
Among the points that Alex calls out, one is that around 12,000 customers were affected worldwide. While I stated on Saturday that "very few customers" were affected -- a poor choice of words, I will be the first to admit --, this by no means was meant to downplay the experience endured by those customers. As Alex puts it, "one bad customer experience is one too many," and I completely agree. That's the most important point and cannot be overstated. My apologies to anyone who felt slighted by interpreting that MS' stance was less than responsive and empathetic; I can assure you that the team worked non-stop to restore service to affected Genuine users.
I'll not go into the details of the issue here but instead leave you to review them on Alex's blog. Also, Alex has invited those with questions to address them to him via his blog.