I also haven't pirated games since I was a child, but I run Linux, and I game on Linux, whether desktop or on my ROG Ally (Bazzite).
The experience for me, when I buy a game, is that I either don't buy one with DRM, or, I buy one that _might_ work, and then I spend a little while trying to get the right version of Proton that runs correctly, and get banned / blocked temporarily for switching my machine identifiers or something too much.
It really is a sick joke that the experience for gaming, music and video is all far, far better for those who _don't_ pay than for those who do.
> It really is a sick joke that the experience for gaming, music and video is all far, far better for those who _don't_ pay than for those who do.
Denuvo is effective enough that if a game has it, it is almost impossible to pirate. So in most cases, it is either pay or do not play the game at all.
There was one key player who knew how to crack Denuvo DRM. They went by the name Empress but haven't cracked anything in the past year, and also mentally deranged, often including very transphobic rants in the NFO file of the torrents they release.
> it is either pay or do not play the game at all
That's still a net win for the pirate I'd argue; for them it's zero steps to "don't play the game at all", for someone like myself it's pay->waste time trying to get it run and fail->refund/no-refund.
The wasting of time is because you are using an unsupported operating system. It sounds like if you switched to one you wouldn't have to waste time since the OS would support everything the game needs.
There is quite a bit of anecdotal evidence that many Denuvo-protected games run worse on the recommended hardware and O/S until the Denuvo protection is removed. The end result is a worse day-one experience for the people who pay the most than for either the pirates (if any) or the people who wait for the game to fall out of the early hype phase.
It feels optimistic to think that the DRM works perfectly on every possible configuration running a supported OS though, does it not?