What's wrong with assuming the customer is a criminal if the big majority of your customers are, in fact, criminals? (Presuming that by "customer" you just mean "person playing your game.")
The question should be: how do you account for the fact that your customers are criminals and still make money without crippling your game? Putting useful features online is a good answer to that question.
Well, if I'm the (non-criminal) customer and you're the game producer, what's wrong with it is that you're making your problem my problem. It isn't, it shouldn't be and I'm not going to let it be (and no, I don't pirate, I just don't buy stuff I dislike).
That's why I said "without crippling the game." You're right, though; most developers will make their problem your problem, either to a small degree (by making sure that some useful things are only accessible for authenticated online clients) or a large degree (requiring always-on connectivity, nutty DRM schemes.)
I don't think there's really anything "wrong" with that, though. It's not very fair, but that's how the world works. Given that people are going to continue to try making money from games, it seems like an optimal outcome.
I'm not sure it's an optimal outcome. It might help it some cases, but it definitely feeds the problem it's trying to solve. The less people like you, the less guilty they'll feel screwing you over. I don't pirate games, but pirating Activision titles would feel downright good.
It also often creates the paradox that pirates get a better experience. Once the pirates work around all your antifeatures, the pirated version is actually a better product than the one you're selling (which makes piracy even more tempting).
If you had a choice between a shop that detained you in an "interview room", and checked your bags, pockets and body cavities against the receipt, every single time you went there, and one that just had a few CCTV cameras, which would you choose?
2) It makes people think "If I'm going to be punished anyway, I might as well commit the crime"
In some countries (IIRC, both Finland & Netherlands do this), purchasers of recordable media are "treated as criminals" and pre-emptively fined for copying music (specifically music, not software). If I were subject to that kind of treatment, you bet I'd copy as much music as I could lay my hands on.
The question should be: how do you account for the fact that your customers are criminals and still make money without crippling your game? Putting useful features online is a good answer to that question.