With PCs, it's not yet there but it's going that way (most games nowadays come either on Steam, Origin or Uplay which is the same thing - you have to install a third party program on your PC and "validate" your game. Aside from older games, only games by indie developers (independent, meaning mostly basic or niche games) come DRM-free nowadays, and select individual gems (games from companies like, Frictional Games, CD-Projekt, and big successes of Kickstarter).

Fun thing is, you can buy the game and play a hacked version and no freaking law prevents you from doing so (unless you distribute it or tell others how do do it). It's fair use even in USA, I believe.

Funnier thing is, pirates get better experience nowadays than legal consumers! Before, pirates had games that were crashing or bugging, games with missing manuals that prevented progres (how'd you fly in MM6?) and nowadays, pirates get a clean product while legal users get this DRM nonsense.

But there's huge money put into this by multiple corporations (even if they're competing with each other, they all insist on the same idea that you have to let them control your PC via their software to enjoy their games), and thus, over time people get adapted to it. When Steam started several years ago, the majority was upset and basically everybody shunned it as bullshit. Nowadays, a lot of people got used to all the "community" and other features of it and actually support the system, to the point of "If the game isn't on Steam I won't buy it".

And truth is, it brings it's positives.

Huge discounts, large amount of free or try-before-you-buy content, way less issues for typical casual customer (it installs everything for you and updates it too and fixes all patch issues too). It's even moving towards "Satisfaction guaranteed" - with surprisingly, EA taking the first step - basically, with such a system installed on every user's PC they can give you moneyback if you don't like the game because they can be sure you really didn't like it, since they can see if you're lying. That is because they can see how long did you play, how far did you get in the game, which levels you played and how, and they can see wether you really didn't get far and just gave up, or you played the whole singleplayer story to the end and try to basically get away with playing it for free. Without such system, they could never tell - maybe you played the whole game? Maybe you didn't even get it to run properly?

I don't know really. I guess eventually they will just tweak the DRM to stop being a nuisance - basically, making it transparent to the user (no popups, no launching third party apps, nothing, if user doesn't want it - just check game legitimacy in background and launch it). And solve the issues where it can prevent you from playing your games if something goes corrupt with it. And then it'll stop being really a big deal.