I remember the physical media PC game days. At the end, the games had horrible copy protection/DRM. I remember not having an internet connection for a while and I went to buy a game that I could play. All the games on the shelf had a notice on the box that said “internet connection required”. Single player games needed to be activated, and if you ran out of activations you either had to contact the company to reset it or you were shit outta luck. I far prefer the combination of Steam and GoG.
I remember the physical media PC game days before those days when CDs had a copy protection that barely worked and nothing else. I got a game, headed home, installed it and played the whole afternoon without being online once.