Don’t fight pirates, convert them

It is clear that, regardless of the law, a very large number of people are willing to download illegal game copies. The previous years have been littered with attempts from games companies trying to fight pirate activity, including DRM (Digital Rights Management). Invariably, the DRM is circumvented by pirates and the legitimate consumers are left with restrictions (for example, single player games requiring constant internet connections).
This needs a different approach, and fast. The music industry has been fighting piracy for longer, and has failed, resulting in wasted legal fees, angry customers and decreasing profits. Most games companies view pirates entirely as enemies and, as a result, spend their time fighting them unproductively.
This is pointless. Instead, they should view them as potential customers.
Most individuals engaged in piracy will obtain their games digitally from BitTorrent sites. These are massively popular online communities, clearly visited by games enthusiasts. Rather than trying to stop people from pirating your game, engage with them on their platforms and spend your effort trying to get them to buy your game.
Get the community on board, and use some wise pricing strategies (see Minecraft for an excellent example). This approach does not require you to support piracy; you only support the file sharing platforms on which it occurs. There is nothing inherently illegal about file sharing; a lot of legal transfers also occur on these sites.
There is a massive tech-savvy community out there, being treated as the enemy with fruitless results. Think of them as potential customers and you will already have made a great step forward.