I agree with you that piracy doesn't have to end in bankruptcy, however I don't have any evidence of it besides this survey [1]. Nevertheless, I think that the developer wanted to make a point and hi did it in a very powerful way.

[1] http://goo.gl/vagAt A survey comissioned by Google for the American Assembly -research center at Columbia University- has been published recenetly where it basically concludes that users who download content from peer to peer sites buy 30% more than the ones who don’t.