It's polygon, their work was already pretty dreadful, but I feel like I distinctly recall that they started using AI slopware to generate most of their content a while back?

I assumed you were exaggerating, but literally the first paragraph states they're "punting into the stratosphere" the "concept that you have to pay to play a game". What an insane false equivalency.

Pirating it is still illegal, and pretty much every game is cracked and distributable eventually, making it no different than this case. This reads like either a very uneducated reporter, or some kind of deliberate propaganda on behalf of tools like Denuvo.