Hello,
I am currently a Cyberterrorism specialist with the United States Air Force.
As such, a lot of my work falls in line with combating online piracy, starting with Ebooks. I have successfully helped to expose ebook piracy to quite a few authors.

Now I am doing so with games on here.

F95zone.to
I am not sure if this is an approved website, but because I've heard that it gives games away for free, I wouldn't assume so. It's a slap in the consumer who actually PAYS for games like this. Especially Full Service.

When googling for updates, I came across a link (that I cannot seem to pull up off-hand) that gave the game away for free on this website. This is, by FAR not the only game that was on there. When confronted, the website moderators were incredibly hostile, as are quite a few members of the community.

So my question. How does one combat piracy and copyright infringement? (Especially copyright infringement within games like Medieval Times that have used music from friends of mine without expressed permission. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjMZjGhrFq_4llVS_x2XJ_w Utterly disrespectful.)

To me, it doesn't seem like piracy is going anywhere. Is there anything that the devs on here can do to ensure that their hard work is not being given away? 

If you realize your game's been cracked by a cracking group, I wrote a whole guide on my website telling developers on how to deal with it. The easiest way to do it is to file a DMCA complaint. The guide on my website can be located here:

http://drillimation.com/2021/03/28/did-your-game-get-cracked-by-a-cracking-group...

I had to do this once for my game Chuhou Joutai. After I filed a DMCA complaint and the page was subsequently taken down, I posted the following press release on my website:

http://drillimation.com/2020/10/26/drillimation-systems-targets-skidrow-cracked-...

Other than DMCA take down, you can also report it to the webhost or who ever is hosting. They must comply with the copyright law or they risk losing protections.

This is really good information!

I would report piracy on my game, but honestly I wouldn't expend too much energy caring about it and expend my energy on more positive things. Combatting piracy is a digital game of whack-a-mole and I honestly feel like people who can afford to buy the game buy it, and those who can't pirate it. If they can't pirate it then they just won't buy it. Now I know there's a minority of people who CAN afford it and still pirate it, but those people are a lost cause anyway and are the same people who downvote Shiba Inu videos on YouTube.