Totally solid option for some people, but not everyone. Depends on the game (some can’t be judged in two hours), your available time (can’t refund a game you bought a year ago that you only just now played), etc., and limits you to buying only from Steam. What if you’d rather buy from GOG or Humble Bundle?

I appreciate the input!

You might want to remember that there are also working grunts in that food chain. They already got paid to make the game, yes, but that was in the expectation of profit. If the game crashes, those execs will look for scapegoats.

Buying games feeds the vampires, but also the devs (even if only in scraps). In our current world, there's not a whole lot of options outside of "only buy indie games" to both support developers and avoid filling the pockets of execs and investors.

A few people pirating games instead of paying for them isn't a big deal, but it eventually turns into a "tragedy of the commons" issue like other forms of theft. Either the suppliers won't be able to stay in business or they'll work out ever more comprehensive (and invasive) prevention mechanisms. Remember when games were just the program on the disk and you didn't need keys and an online connection to activate your copy?