Piracy is such a touchy subject, I think perhaps most of all because all statistics related to it are subjective. There is no absolute that person A would have bought product X were product X not available to be pirated.
Big business would lead you to believe this, but it isn't true.
There is also no absolute that if, say, person A let friend B know about product X, that friend B will buy or pirate X. However, both outcomes are possible and happen regularly.
Colludium you said "imagine that someone copies and plays your pay-to-own game, but they got it from a torrent site. Imagine that person tells you that they weren't stealing your work" I would not tell them that they were stealing anything. However, I would ask that if they had money that they buy my game or at least let their friends know about it.
I'm not gonna lie, I have pirated content before. One of the primary examples being anime. I would not be purchasing anime or anime-related products if I never pirated that content. Or at least significantly less. It is as simple as that. In my case, that industry has profited directly off of my pirating.
Say what you will, though. There are definite positives and drawbacks to the pirate side of the media industry.