I think you may have misunderstood: sometimes the intent is to hurt a company. I believe that sometimes it can be entirely morally justifiable.
When I am able to pay content creators directly, I do. I am not a pirate, myself, though I have pirated in the past. I think some of the rationale behind pirating derives from intolerance of anti-consumer practices. If I'm paying for a streaming service, I shouldn't be forced to watch ads. If I'm paying for a game, there shouldn't be day one DLC-gated content, especially if that content is already part of the game and the DLC does little more than unlock it (I'm looking at you Bioware).
Pirating isn't always about stealing for the sake of using or watching something for free. It can be about that, sure, but it isn't always. Often, it's about punishing entities for bad practices---for treating customers unfairly, for instance, or for restricting access to content.
And usually the people who make decisions that negatively affect customers are removed from the creation of the content itself. It's kind of sad, really.
Notable to the list of titles that won't work is Destiny 2.
Having said that, I've been using Linux as my daily driver for everything, including gaming, since June, and I haven't run into many issues. It's certainly worth the minor hassle entailed to get some titles to work, if only to get away from Windows 100%. You can always dual boot.
If you aren't very technical, I would also consider Linux Mint. You won't always have access to the latest and greatest, but it's simple and very easy to learn if you're coming from Windows.
Someone from my state recently died fighting for Ukraine. I live in New England. I guess we aren't American?
Thank you so much; your response was very helpful. I guess I'm canceling my Nord sub now...
Can I piggy back on this and ask why NordVPN isn't as highly recommended?