True; they still do a minimum to keep people honest, but all those methods, to my knowledge, are already defeated if you look around. Their stick is making piracy annoying to do, along with the carrot of a long reputation of good games.
I'm pretty much OK with CD-keys, and I tolerate Steam because it hasn't had serious problems yet, but anything else I tend to distrust.
And offline is way better than it used to be. Is it still problematic?