Oh, were you not alive when Steam started being a thing and piracy sharply reduced? Turns out people like to buy things from people who make things they like.

I was alive, yes, it sounds like you weren't because Steam was universally hated for the DRM inconvenience it put around HL2.

Hahaha no, but I did forget that it affected HL2. It was interesting how the more egregious DRM actually made the product worse, people downloading the cracked version were legitimately just choosing the superior version.

If there is no IP I can just download your game and sell it on the epic store. In fact, Steam doesn't even need to pay the developers royalties at all.

You can, but you'd use more DRM and server components. In the extreme your game would be streaming on something like GeForce Now so only paying customers can access it.

To a large extent we also see that today (because let's be honest, current copyright law is not enforced very consistently) and there are still big-budget movies and games being released.

Copies of GTA 6 won't work online, which is what the vast majority of people are likely going to be buying it for. Lack of copyright also doesn't mean lack of sales. GTA 5 was a huge commercial success despite being cracked in days.

I pay for Tidal and buy 99% of my games despite having access to safe private trackers. On the other hand I pirate 100% of my TV and movies. Make of that what you will but for me it's always a service issue (or lack thereof).

Without copyright, it wouldn’t just be pirates on shady websites distributing GTA5. It would be ripped and sold at Walmart and on Steam by anyone.

Why would anyone pay for HBO when Netflix could just put up The Last of Us without paying a cent.

Why would AMC theaters pay Disney for Avengers 5 when they can just pay some Disney employee to send them a copy for free?