Thought experiments don't need to be realistic when they are responses to deductive arguments. [1]
You can't use a thought experiment to argue that people should change their behavior because of a problem, as you're pointing out - and I'm not doing that. I'm not saying people should not pirate things because piracy is bad for game developers. I pirate things. I'm not making a statement about piracy.
ddevault is doing something rather specific: arguing that because intellectual property rights do not exist, anyone whose work is copied does not lose anything. This is an argument that is contradicted by a possible world in which someone loses something, even if you don't think it's our actual world.
You can't use a thought experiment to argue that people should change their behavior because of a problem, as you're pointing out - and I'm not doing that. I'm not saying people should not pirate things because piracy is bad for game developers. I pirate things. I'm not making a statement about piracy.
ddevault is doing something rather specific: arguing that because intellectual property rights do not exist, anyone whose work is copied does not lose anything. This is an argument that is contradicted by a possible world in which someone loses something, even if you don't think it's our actual world.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deductive_reasoning