Antichamber was pretty good for this. You would accidentally fall off a bridge or something and expect a game over, only to find an entirely new area to explore. There were no failure states as far as I remember.
I have to imagine a comment like this does absolutely nothing to their sales figures. People who were going to download a cracked version of their games anyway remain unaffected now that they have a blessing, and I doubt people who weren’t going to pirate would now feel more inclined to do so.
This seems like good PR and frankly it should probably be the default position for games studios.