What I would like to see as a deterent to pirating would be to reward not pirating. An example of I mean would be to have some kind of agreement in the purchase that, in addition to what they get from the initial purchase, there will additional content for people with the game with the amount depending on the net profit (not counting the cost of making the additional content). Then people that get the game illegally will not only be hurting the company but everyone the paid for the game.

Such a measure would likely not effect fans (who will buy the game because they want more games like it) and hardcore pirates (who do not care), but it would likely decrease pirating from people inbetween. The reason pirating is increasing is because it is not precieved as being wrong by more and more people (or at least not wrong enough to out wiegh the amount of money they could save by getting it illegally) and something like this would change that. Now pirating would not just hurt a (to non-fans) annonamous company, but individual consumers would be hurt as well. People that have had their purchase devalued by pirating will be less likely to do so themselves.

This would be a slow process but I think over time it would reverse the current trend toward pirating.