Todd Hollenshead remembers how eager he felt to show off id Software’s latest version of “Doom” to an assembly of journalists gathered in Hong Kong 10 days before the game’s official launch. It was 2004—a decade had passed since “Doom II” hit store shelves—and the new PC game was crammed with visceral demon-slaying mayhem.

Then he got a virtual jab in his own gut: A journalist told him that pirated copies of “Doom 3” were already in stores throughout Hong Kong. “The pirates had beaten us to market with our very own game by at least a week in Asia,” he recalls.

Since then, pirating of videogames has only gotten worse—and the pain that game developers like Hollenshead feel has grown more acute. The result: Pirates are literally changing the very business of making PC games. The number of PC exclusives is going down and alternative approaches—from delivering games digitally to focusing more tightly on console games—is going up.