This article points to a research that concludes that piracy is really not an issue for those companies though.

And yet we still have anti-theft measures on most games. The anti-theft measures aren’t there because there were never any thieves. They are there because theives provide a scapegoat to publishers to blame low revenue on. Regardless of whether or not it is actually happening, the net results are the same because the lie is there. Pirating or stealing games may not have a real effect, or may even be a positive one, but it doesn’t matter because there is still a negative outcome when companies increase the price of their games and force anti-consumer launchers and anti-theft DRM into games.

Imagine a world where pirating music is shun today. Nobody cares now, we all listen to free music online without paying.

Maybe you and your friends do, but a lot of people pay for music streaming services with give an admittedly mediocre amount of revenue to the artists. The idea that we should steal “culture” and make it free to everyone is ludicrous. People still have to eat. All of the time and effort that goes into making a game or a record has an expected return, and that return is a paycheck.

Now, selling a game that cannot be owned and that can be revoked at anytime or a game that can change its TOS on a whim is much scummy imo.

If you don’t want people to pirate your game, price them fairly and allow you customers to own a copy and offer an easy to use service.

That is why there are pro-consumer groups working to make sure that bullshit like what happens today doesn’t continue in the future. The EU and UK have very strong pro-consumer policies that protect the buyer instead of the seller. Change is happening, but it doesn’t make it easier when there is the ever present scapegoat of, “we do this because people steal.”