No, they can not. This is just a standard PR response.
When crackers don’t patch out the phone line, they can.
Edit: Only in some cases, though. They can detect popular ways to crack games, like Steam DRM stubs. If the game has zero identifiable information about the buyer and no or an unsupported DRM, they’re SOL.
and how exactly is unity going to know whether it was gotten legitimately or not? the only way the developers wouldn’t get charged is if crackers patched it out
They can’t detect everything, but let’s look at Steam as an example. If the game detects Steam DRM, then the game knows that they should’ve bought the game on Steam. They can check whether the Steam DRM is a stub and therefore a crack, or get your local Steam account ID and cross-check whether you bought the game with a Steam API.
