You can deal with people in good faith. You don't have to be so cynical as to think that piracy is going to kill your business or livelihood. Game of Thrones was HBO's most-pirated show and also one of the most profitable shows of all time. There are whole stores like GOG that are DRM-free because piracy is not the biggest barrier to making a profit. Getting your content to people and letting them give you money are the important parts.

There isn't anyway of knowing it was the most profitable unless you can prove that the number of people who signed up for HBO because of GOT was enough of an increase to make up for the cost.

Maybe? But I haven't seen any surveys.

HBO knows how many people watched, yeah. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-television-gameofthrones/... Here's an estimate of the costs and revenues. https://decider.com/2019/05/21/game-of-thrones-hbo-profits/ ThinkMoney had a somewhat lower estimate but they don't say how they got those numbers. https://www.finance-monthly.com/2019/05/how-much-money-has-h...