Cracking got harder and licensed distribution in the 2010s became as convenient and consumer friendly as it unlicensed distribution was for pirates in the early 2000s.
Region locked games started disappearing, coinciding with less physical media needs to begin with.
Flagship titles started being released cross region simultaneously.
Downloads and streaming was available and fast.
The marketplaces and discovery gradually got better too, still limited here but not better than what the marketplaces distributing unlicensed content have.
There is also the part about the budget, but I'm not sure. Expense was a factor, but I'm not sure how big of a factor. The things people do on Steam and other marketplaces is similar to what pirates were doing: downloading a ton of games for free because they could, but only playing the flagship games and never touching the other ones. So the pirates-turned-consumers are still only buying a handful of games, and now also have access to the promotions and plethora of free stuff as the always-consumers.
I imagine there are other people like me, where the pirating actually drives sales. But yeah, to the people who don’t make tons of money, it’s often the only way they’ll ever play the game.
1. Once someone overcomes the upfront information barrier to piracy continued piracy has barely a convenience differential from using official channels. The user going to the steam page to enter their credit card and buy the game is doing as much work as the insider pirate knowing the right trackers to source a cracked version from that often comes with its own one click installer. Especially when official releases encumber the game in DRM that often breaks it for some fraction of legitimate buyers.
2. Games are still, if not region locked, regionally released. You still often cannot get AAA titles within months of publication at any price in many countries and if you can they often cost more than a whole days pay. There is a market to play the latest titles when you have no practical access to them where you live.
Some friends still run the odd cracked game/app. A couple decades ago I didn't discourage it, but nowadays I advise that the hacking scene is filled with seriously malicious actors and protection via anti-rootkit/virus apps is pretty weak.