Steam, as well as numerous other marketplaces, have already proven the piracy boogeyman was nonsense.

The overwhelming majority of customers are happy to pay for games as long as it's not a giant pain in the ass to do so. The people that pirate games either:

1. Lack the money to buy the game in the first place in their budget
2. Were motivated by the act of piracy itself

Neither were actually going to pay for the game in the first place. And with the significant increase in both risk and awareness regarding information security, people that were "on the fence" for one of the above reasons have a high probability of deciding not to pirate just to play it safe.