Comment by easyThrowaway

DRM is not, and it has never been, about piracy.

It is about publishers putting an expiry date to a digital product, in order to not having to compete with their own products in the future.

It is about making sure that by the time your hypothetical FIFA 2026 release comes out, all the available existing copies of FIFA 2019-2023, which mostly differ for the squad roster, are unusable.

This is exactly the same reason for single player games requiring constant online support nowadays. The authorization servers for "The Crew", a mainly single player game by Ubisoft, went offline coinciding with the close release of "The Crew Motorfest". This didn't go unnoticed, and nearly ended up with the EU passing some specific legislation on the matter[1].

[1]https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/initiatives/details/20...