This post is literally about a game that never did that so what's your point?
As far as I could tell the game is still sold at around 40€ so OP's point still stands.
The way I see it, considering games are made to make money, the only alternative to DRM is going free to play. They then make their money with microtransactions.
Thankfully the people who made the vast collection of GOG and Humble Bundle games I own disagreed.
This is literally the only recent exception.
According to CrackWatch there are at least 1025 exceptions.