That's not what he means. Both of you have gotten into a pointless argument. A severe issue is that Pirates offer a better service. They offer games before release, at zero cost, with little threat of legal rammification, and don't punish the customer.
Meanwhile, publishers make their service worse, Ubisofts DRM, One-time passes, etc, and increase the prices of their games. This makes the piracy seem like a better deal. It is. It's also wrong, but the customer cares about the customer. The publisher should pay attention to this. Always on DRM? Not helpful, and it makes piracy better (Assassins Creed 2 is a game I am yet to finish due to that). Expensive DLC, and shorter games? Makes me able to buy less games, and makes the pirated copy even less of a hassle by comparison.
In contrast, Steam, is always on DRM, BUT, it offers social networking, game sales, VOIP, special deals, cloud storage, and unlimited downloads. See, if more took a leaf from Valve's book, and improved the service (And Steam is booming), rather than punishing the customer, then they'd be more likely to get sales. Reducing the stupid prices wouldn't go astray either.
If the pirates can offer a better service, then people will have no reason to buy games properly. Which is a terrible shame, because that hurts games in general.