Piracy is a byproduct of a bad service. If I pay for a product I shouldn't be locked to a specific hardware or operating system and those issues are resolved with piracy.
They probably blame piracy again for their loss in profits instead of throwing out those woke activists and listening to what their actual customers want.
The App Lounge from /e/OS has access to the play store if you choose to log in to Google. It is possible (but not recommended because of a possible ban) to purchase stuff, I haven't done that yet, but some apps want to talk to Google to see if it was purchased and that gives an error.
For example, Wavelet can't unlock paid status, All-In-One Calculator gives the option to link an email so it can restore paid status, Nova Launcher uses a different app to restore paid status so it works as well.