Doesn't this makes it "okay" to pirate games?
Well you could say that the existence of freeware games makes it seem ok to pirate games. Yes, I suppose it might confirm the belief that you shouldn't have to pay for games. I think a bigger concern is that this sort of technology will be available to Ubisoft and EA, but Joe IndieGamer probably will end up with some cheap-ass third party variation which pays a fraction of what the big companies are getting, and they may end up trying to sell it the old way anyway. Which might well be more difficult.
Surely the pirates will have some reference as to what the game really is like, and crack it, just like every other game?
Now this is what I'm thinking too. You're still going to need SecureRomAd or StarAdForce to stop people from disabling the ads, aren't you? And then you've still got the same nasty DRM stuff on your hard drive. Ok, if the DRM fails you're not completely prevented from playing the game, but you're still the one inconvenienced while the pirates are playing ad-free care of "The Scene".
Or is the point of the exercise that the crackers won't find the same challenge in breaking and removing the protection if it's only ads? Because I suspect they will.