> 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?