I’m in the games industry. This is exactly how it works.

If you say something nice about the game to 2 friends where 1 friend pirates and the other buys, the company makes net 0 from the sales, and they tell 2 friends and so on. Then after buying company in bankruptcy, use remote exploit to delete all copies and send shares skyrocketing even more than OP.

The hard part is having enough storage to pirate a $60 game a million times.