I understand his feeling.
I'm a web programmer who tried to enter Game Industry. I understand really well on how hard it is to make & develop a game.
Stop understanding game designers and understand
pirates.
People who pirate, whatever their reason for pirating (can't afford it/justify the expense/refuse to pay for things they can get without paying/whatever the reason)
do not start paying if you somehow make it inaccessible to them (good luck with that, anyway). They just go somewhere else.
Additionally, you need to realize that, whether you want people to get it for free or not, there is value in people acquiring something for free. Sometimes people are, like, "wow, this is good! I should give them money for this!"
They're only going to do that if they play it, and, as noted above, pirates aren't going to be playing it if they can't pirate it.
You also have to realize a lot of h-games are hot garbage, and if you find that out by PAYING for them...? And then you can't get your money back? (DLSite doesn't have any refund policy as far as I was able to find when I went looking for it, for example. Meanwhile, Steam's sucks.)
I'm in one of those first two categories in the parentheses, but even if I were rolling in money, I still wouldn't want assholes who make trash and try to pass it off as good to get money, so I'd still pirate and then give money to the people I thought deserved it.