VPN != VPN. You're thinking about "paid proxy for e.g. piracy", they're thinking of "tool to make computers in two different locations believe they're on the sa

VPN != VPN. You're thinking about "paid proxy for e.g. piracy", they're thinking of "tool to make computers in two different locations believe they're on the same LAN". Both are the same technology under the hood, but the use differs. In this case you've got a network with some devices on it in location A, and a device in location B and you'd like to make B believe it's on the LAN of location A. Both a traditional VPN such as wireguard or OpenVPN and SSH with SOCKS can accomplish this.