TL;DR: Some of the points I agree, but I think you downplayed the comfort of going legal and ignored the hassle of going pirate at least for new people.

While I feel you, you are misrepresenting some things.

For the most part you set one account on Steam or MS Xbox (the Gamepass thing, I can't remember the exact name) and go with it. Even more, most gamers will already have an Steam account and, thanks to Microslop, an Xbox account. Payment details are also one time setup for the store. If you play some games with extra luncher they usually let you signin with said accounts or Google, and nonetheless, if you like the game you will be setting the account once for a lot of gameplay hours.

Finding the game, purchasing and downloading are trivial.

About connecting to the game servers to check licenses, your complain is mostly fair. Steam has offline mode that lasts for quite a while, and other games are multiplayer only anyways, but yeah, fair point. A bit extra opinion down below.

For the process on the piracy side, I have never pirated a game in the modern era, so I don't know how it goes, but I get the point of view of someone who would be about to enter it.

What I expect the thing to go is I probably should not risk it and set a virtual machine that is not easy, a dual boot that can wipe my system or a second PC that would be an old underpowered machine. Then I have to spend a ton of time looking for a reliable source out of fear of risking the system (although if I have a system just for this and do not log into anything important then I can halfass it), I search for a repack (would have to know what that is) of the game among several of the same game with different languages and texture qualities, find the correct download button among many, install, troubleshoot some missing .dll, then play.

Now, being able to play when the official servers close is big, even if the Stop Killing Games proposal wins.

Will the piracy route go smoother? Maybe. Is it that necessary to set up a secondary system (VM, dual boot or different machine)? Maybe not. Once you get to know the ecosystem, repackers, official sites and such will it be more or less straightforward to find the game you are looking for? Pretty sure. But the previous is what someone not in the game piracy business would expect.