I haven't kept up with mainstream gaming in a while. IIRC, EAC v1 doesn't require TPM 2.0 and thus is security theater, right? An attacker could just tamper the binary.

The same goes for a binary protected by TPM 2.0, but the attacker would have to re-implement the protected parts. The defender's bet is that this should require too much effort/time/knowledge to bother.