It means a lot because the majority of a game's total sales will be in the first 3 weeks. After one month, you're more or less done. Very few games have any sort of tail, let alone a long one. [EDIT: I'm speaking in general for high-profile retail games]
Assuming that even a small percentage (say 1%) of pirates will try piracy first but will resort to paying if the piracy option fails, then having DRM that is unbroken for the first week could mean the difference of $millions in revenue.