The year has barely begun but the e-sports industry is staking a claim as a serious trend to watch throughout 2018, with several companies already attracting acquisitions by major media players in January. Pay TV security specialist Irdeto is the latest to enter the space, buying Austrian gaming security firm Denuvo for an undisclosed fee. Irdeto joins one of its customers, Russian mobile operator MTS, which acquired Gambit ESports last week, and more recently Mail.ru, buying ESforce for an estimated $100 million. Interestingly, Irdeto has highlighted Russia as a region notorious for piracy where the company is focused on winning deployments, suggesting the purchase of Denuvo has been made with the Russian market in mind. This would create a rather…