Define "effective".
That still relies on official servers, which, as we know, have a tendency of dying without proper alternatives.
You can also do that with cracked copies of anything. Just sayin' :3
Effective, meaning that it actually makes piracy less common and that it seems to be the only solution that hasn't been dropped by industry after few years of trying hard to convince everybody the new solution really works.
It is obvious that official servers happen to die after some time. Bigger communities always seem to find a way around it though. For example the story of Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance is very interesting. It had it servers closed very soon after release but now its all taken by community and the game not only has multiplayer but it is also better than it has ever been.
As long as the game is supported, there should be no need to alter it in any way. And running cracked software is rather dangerous. So a single player that needs connection to the server is a huge inconvinience. If you need it to play multiplayer, then it is understandable.