Fortunately since 2015 it has been legal to circumvent DRM for games that have had their single-player mode rendered inoperable by the decommissioning of an activation server:

https://copyright.gov/1201/2015/fedreg-publicinspectionFR.pd...

Yes, it still sucks when publishers make their customers jump through hoops like this, potentially exposing them to malware if the necessary DRM circumvention software comes from a dubious source.