Steam/GoG and other services disprove this quite clearly. You can pirate games sold on these platforms trivially and safely. In the case of GoG you can often ev

Steam/GoG and other services disprove this quite clearly. You can pirate games sold on these platforms trivially and safely. In the case of GoG you can often even get signed installers given the trend against drm. Nonetheless these services are highly successful and profitable. I think one problem is this weirdness of the 21st century where many companies, especially in media, are seen as antagonistic towards their own customers - this provides a major motivation for piracy. For games, particularly from smaller studios, it's the exact opposite. They generally seem highly concerned with the interest and satisfaction of their players, and so you want to pay them. Many of these studios even sell things like soundtracks (already available in the install folder) as 'pay more' buttons, and plenty of people buy them.