Steam seems to have significantly reduced the market for pirated games. Streaming did that for movies for a while, until every single production company decided start their own.
Almost like Gabe Newell is right, piracy is first and foremost a service problem. There's some irony in things like Denuvo making games worse for legitimate users and creating new incentives to crack it, or players deferring purchases until it's either inevitably removed long after the launch window (where publishers are expecting the majority of purchases to happen).
To some extent. With modern AAA games costing ~$100AUD these days, there is still a strong incentive to pirate even if it’s far more convenient to buy.
It definitely is nuanced and everyone has their limits, which may depend on their personal circumstance. The solution for companies it to find a solution. An easy enough solution at a price point most people find reasonable. There are some people where the convenience or price point will never be good enough, but those are edge cases. As mentioned by someone else in a different way, you don't want to alienate your majority of happy current users to try to scoop up the handful who will probably just write off your product completely rather than pay.
For instance, current Netflix pricing I am okay with, with the content they have. If the price triples, you bet your ass I am going back to torrents unless they really step up the quality and quantity of content.
The games industry has moved to where even single player games are online enhanced experiences. As angry as that makes users here, gamers and corporations are quite happy with that arrangement which blocks piracy and makes games more fun.
