That is absolutely untrue. Games used to be sold as a physical object containing the game files. No serial numbers to redeem, no servers, no downloads or updates. Sometimes you'd get a booklet with the game that had some codes in it that the game would ask for on startup to make making copies a little more difficult, but that was it.

You'd literally have everything you need just on the CD, disk, or cartridge. We 100% owned the game and the system it was played on, and the only way to revoke that would have been to physically break into your house and steal it.

This whole games as services thing is about 20 years old tops, and it wasn't even remotely approaching the standard for quite a while after that.