I’ll add my anecdote here. I haven’t pirated a game in ten years, but when I was a student, I pirated most of my games. Almost all of the ones that I played for more than a few days, I now own legally. Some of these games, I’ve become a big fan of the series and buy all new games (I pirated the original Witcher game for example, I now own it, the collectors edition of the second, the third game and am eagerly awaiting basically any game the developer releases. While it’s likely I would have eventually played The Witcher 3 anyway given how successful it was, I’d likely have missed the Witcher 2 and probably wouldn’t be such a blind fanboy of anything CDPR release)

I also regularly NOT buy games (but nowadays also don’t pirate them, in the past I might have) if they hnave intrusive DRM