The trick to beat Pirate Mode is having a good resources management and being familiar with all the game basic mechanics.
You'll be instantly presented with some new characteristics once you develop the first game. You will notice, for example that your incomes will be reduced by piracy by 70 to 90% every time you decide to sell your games, and this will let you without enough money to keep on going for a long run (you will likely bankrupt in one year and a half).

To counter Piracy, you need to develop a COPY PROTECTION from your DRM voice under your research tab. This voice will pop up only once you research custom engines, so YOU WILL NEED 50 RP ASAP.

-So firstly develop 3 games in a quick succession (cheapest as possible, since you will be pirated anyway and you want to spare all you can - Take out graphics and sound to make it cheaper, and develop for pc only)
-Generate 3 game reports
-You will now have enough RP to research CUSTOM ENGINES (50RP) and COPY PROTECTION V1 (15RP)

What you will be missing for sure now is MONEY
It's vital and necessary that you accept the request of sharing your actions of your company with buyers. They will give you credit and leech a little bit of your incomes every time you sell your games, but it's largely better to do so than getting into debt and having to give back twice the sum, with reduced incomes from piracy and low game scores.

Even when you accept that money, only develop Copy protection in your very first engine.

WE WILL OWN YOU, if you read it through the lines, is what they tell you in the pop -up message when they try to acquire your shares, and you should be careful not to give away more than 60% of your shares, that would reduce your incomes by more or less 15%. Counting that your COPY PROTECTION will still let at least 10-15% of piracy (and up to 50-60% when it gets old) you don't want to lose more than 10-15% more of your incomes due to sharings.

So let's say you got DRM and you start selling your 7-ish games in the garage. You will note that once your CP (copy protection from now on) will level up, and at the same time will get less and less effective. When the piracy will grow back up around 30% and you will have a level 3 CP (minimum for upgrading), it will be time to research a LV 2 CP from the research tab.
BE CAREFUL IF YOU MISS TO UPGRADE YOUR COPY PROTECTION IN TIME, YOU WILL PROBABLY GO BANKRUPT SOON!

Every CP level you research will be A LOT more expensive and will cost more and more points (up to 150 RP and 1.2M for the level 6). This means that you have to use your RPs carefully and you can't spend too much money on mediocre games, and early research. Also, the better your CP level the higher it will cost to implement it in your games, making them more and more expensive.

So, going back to our garage, increase your scores slowly, introducing small bits of tech research and trying to raise your T and D scores slowly.

The moment you can search for target audience and you have a few good features in your engine (around 3-4 years of game) go for a good game. Put all your effort and tech to make it, with great combo, great platform and a new CP if possible, target it to the right audience, and release a top score hit, or something like that. You should get between 1 and 2 million of cr. At this point the game will ask you if you want to move to the second office. Your answer will be NO.
Do it only once you have at least 3M, that you should reach releasing two or three more 8-ish/9-ish games in a row, depending by your current state of finances.
Also don't buy back your shares yet.

IF YOU FAIL TO MOVE TO YOUR NEW OFFICE IN 8-9 YEARS YOU WILL BE DOOMED, because you won't be able to have enough research points to further upgrade both your CP and game techs, your scores will drop or your games will be pirated around 90%, or maybe both of them.

Once you have successfully moved to your second office the hardest part of the game will start. The costs will be high and despite being risky, you will have to hire 2 new staff member in a row to increase your RP quickly.

DO NOT HIRE STAFF WHO IS TOO EXPENSIVE

Aim for guys with low stats, but GOOD RESEARCH.

As the game progresses you will find yourself getting mediocre marks again, like at the start, that's because of 2 reasons:
1) Your team has to work a few games together to get better at it
2) Your single employees need to work a few games to get better at it.

I separated the two things for one good reason. If you hire them 1 by 1, the work they did alone will be negated by the fact that a new member is in, and then you will need again more time to put things back together once more. Instead, if you decide to hire 3 people together that will mess with your low cr (believe me 3 to 5M is a very risky edge to live in).

Now that you have your 2 new guys working for you, warm them up clearing contracts. That will rise their work bars and at the same time help you with your outcomes and grind a few more precious RP.

You will now spend 1 year or 2 making 7-ish or 8-ish game mostly, always trying best combo and using your new features 1 by 1.

Another thing that you have to manage is the pace at which you create your custom engines. Infact, at this point it's always best to create a new CE (custom engine) when you have both new features and a new version of your CP (that will now be expensive both in money and RPs).

If you succeed in this, you will probably have a good time creating medium games as well, as they require more T-D points to get good scores.

ABOUT MEDIUM GAMES:
Publishers are your only way to survive when you need a lot of money early game and you want to get fans to quickly sell your own medium games soon...but BEWARE! Publishers will give you bad combinations, and getting bad combinations will mean failure in scoring good 75% of times, especially during the early game. IF YOUR PUBLISHING DEALS ARE BAD, DO A SMALL GAME INSTEAD!
Also, avoid marketing, since it's not profitable yet, compared to your incomes. You will have many occasions to hype your games to scripted and random events.

I will resume here what you need to do in your second office:

1) HIRE 2 CHEAP STAFF MEMBERS WITH GOOD RP POINTS
2) DEVELOP NEW SMALL GAMES
3) DEVELOP MEDIUM PUBLISHER DEALS, BUT ONLY IF THEY ARE GOOD MATCHES, OTHERWISE GO FOR MORE SMALL GAMES
4) DEVELOP YOUR COPY PROTECTION TOGETHER WITH NEW FEATURES FOR YOUR NEW CUSTOM ENGINE/S
5) DON'T GIVE UP MORE THAN 60% OF YOUR SHARES OR THINGS MIGHT GET NASTY
6) DON'T USE ANY MARKETING, SINCE IT'S NOT WORTH. USE THE SMALL BOOT OPTION INSTEAD, TIMING YOUR GAME TO GET HYPED.

If you do all this things properly you will be able to upgrade your office and hit a couple of top-score games, and proceeding like this is advisable until you will have more than enough money to take on large games.
You will also have many occasions to buyback your shares, and you will notice that it will be a lot easier when you are safe in the mid game rather than early. If you feel like you can give back that 1-3 M out of you 8-10 do it! It's the right moment.

*in the attached image I had upgraded my second new office, and this is how it looked like.

By time you will be able to do large games you will probably have already researched CP V4 and more features in your engines, and you will be about to move to your new office. I did it around year 20 in a 42Y game.

From now on things will become more regular than you would expect. You will buyback all your remaining shares, and have a good time like it was normal mode, only with that 10 to 30% of piracy biting your arm, but that won't really bother you too much anymore. When you get your hit in your third office you will probably gain like 50 M in a single shot, meaning you will be able to open your R&D lab etc.

The game will be basically the same, but DON'T EVER FORGET TO SPARE RP POINTS UNTIL YOU GET THE CP V6.
You will probably have few time for developing new console or AAA/MMOs but you will be fine.

Hope this will work for you!