The thing almost everyone seems to be ignoring is Markus isn't saying "I think piracy is great and you should all do it" he's saying it exists and you just have to deal with it.
It seems almost everyone is taking what he has said as justification of piracy, "oh well he's rich now and he doesn't mind piracy so it must be okay for me to pirate!". If we ask him whether or not he thinks people should pirate he'll not say "yes, do it" he'll say "Well I'd rather you bought it, but if you're not going to then you may as well play it for free as I'd rather you play my game than go without, and I'm not going to spend millions trying to stop you... but I'd prefer if you paid for it".
Markus isn't saying "I think piracy is great and you should all do it" he's saying it exists and you just have to deal with it.
This is kind of where I always stood (I don't pirate personally, though).
If you're selling some intellectual property, you can sell a bazillion copies with almost no production costs. You produce once and then copy for (almost) free.
Now that everyone has the ability to copy, that massive advantage is somewhat tempered. It isn't quite the wild west, which is good. If piracy was easy and convenient it would eviscerate sales. Most people can't figure out or don't bother with piracy and blatant piracy is legally squashed (in the developed world, at least).
There's not much you can do but accept it as a cost of doing business and soldier on.
It seems almost everyone is taking what he has said as justification of piracy, "oh well he's rich now and he doesn't mind piracy so it must be okay for me to pirate!". If we ask him whether or not he thinks people should pirate he'll not say "yes, do it" he'll say "Well I'd rather you bought it, but if you're not going to then you may as well play it for free as I'd rather you play my game than go without, and I'm not going to spend millions trying to stop you... but I'd prefer if you paid for it".