I wonder how many of the downloaders were simply kicking the tires to see how well it would run on their paltry 2007 vintage hardware.

Seriously though, to play god's advocate: check out this article from the CEO of Stardock games: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080320-pc-game-develo... (Ignore the Pirates)

Back to devil's advocate: Stardock has a good reputation among gamers for being a scrappy independent publisher, so they get some respect from would-be pirates. I don't know that a faceless megacorp like EA could play the same hand.