First of all, let me go ahead and confess: i used to be a pirate (yarr) for a very long time, actually the first game i bought was Civ 4. I don't wanna make my crime seem smaller, but for most of the time neither me, nor my friends knew, that this was wrong, illegal (actually in my country just downloading a game still isn't illegal, only uploading is, but that does not make it more viable morally) And this is no excuse, as i continued to pirate games even after i knew that its wrong, i wanted to play games, i didnt have a job and my mother would have never given me money for a game. Of course this is still no excuse, if i cant buy a car i wont steal it. But these long years of pirating taught me a lot of things about piracy, also i have a lot of friends, who - sadly - still pirate all their games and dont see anything wrong with it, i still visit torrent sites, but now only for series and nfl-games.
Every game will be cracked, even My Little Pony Friends. AAA-games even quicker, a good example is Mafia 2 which was cracked before release. Some people say that DLC-s and multiplayer content will make rats buy games. Wrong and wrong. DLC-s are also cracked and the big titles all have cracked servers or a multiplayer crack. This usually takes a few months, but sometimes less. For CIV there is already a MP-crack, which -supposedly- even lets you play on gamespy servers. Someone mentioned patches as a deterrant for rats. Wrong again, those are easy to get, since the dawn of Steam there are cracked Steam clients which lets you download patches FROM THE OFFICIAL SERVERS. It's a little bit like viruses. There are awesome virus-buster programs avaible, but the virus-makers are always one step ahead. Avast doesnt update 2-3 times a day for nothing you know. So DRM-s really dont seem to make sense, at all.
The only kinda-working DRM is the kind Paradox (my 2nd favourite game designing company BTW, i love HoI) uses: no DRM at all, but you need a serial number to go to the mod discussion and technical help sections of their forums. I wish more publishers would use this method. Non-intrusive and it "locks" important stuff away from pirates.