I have a slightly different story, told by a Romanian coworker who was old enough to have worked in a factory under Ceaucescu: the workers stole from the factory, all the time, at every level. Managers would be able to take away complete items for "testing"; ordinary line workers would be limited to what parts they could plausibly conceal in their overalls at the end of the shift, then assemble them in their own time.
As someone who used to be a Pirate Party supporter, piracy has to exist in an equilibrium to avoid killing the host, and I don't know if that's possible on today's internet. Both "absurdly onerous DRM making the game unplayable, especially once abandoned" and "Rockstar spends $265m making the game, one person buys a copy, and everyone else pirates it" are bad outcomes. The optimal one is probably somewhere in the "a small number of people who Know A Guy pirate the game, gradually increasing over time" range. But that may not be sustainable either.
As someone who used to be a Pirate Party supporter, piracy has to exist in an equilibrium to avoid killing the host, and I don't know if that's possible on today's internet. Both "absurdly onerous DRM making the game unplayable, especially once abandoned" and "Rockstar spends $265m making the game, one person buys a copy, and everyone else pirates it" are bad outcomes. The optimal one is probably somewhere in the "a small number of people who Know A Guy pirate the game, gradually increasing over time" range. But that may not be sustainable either.