You make it sound like drm didn't exist before steam or like steam isn't a form of drm itself. Old drm was more basic and far less nefarious, like entering a cd key or codes in your manual. This later escalated to online activated cd keys. At the very least, these forms of drm didn't run all the time like steam did- I remember steam getting huge pushback (from myself included) because it ran like absolute dogshit. Later forms of drm got worse with checks in the discs that collected data on your pc (securom, anyone?). Steam did a lot of good things but it did not erase drm- it merely created another form of it (I.e. You no longer own your games, you are buying licenses they can revoke at any time)