Lack of historical preservation of ancient technologies and DRM are clearly not the same thing. No-one today really knows what "Greek Fire" was, though I'm pretty sure however it worked, it didn't need an Internet connection nor could be remotely disabled by a software publisher...

In a practical sense, DRM is using stuff without it coming attached to some optional remote kill-switch where some 3rd party can arbitrarily remotely disable it on a whim. It's more about control than arguing over "is a license a possession" for digital media. Needing an online client running or the game refuses to start is DRM. Technological challenges due to natural ageing, eg, "format shifting" like needing to store DOS floppy disc / C64 cassette based games in a different format (zip files) because the hardware to read them isn't mainstream available anymore isn't DRM by itself.

As Tauto said OS's can be backed up too (on EMP resistant optical media too), and if you truly believe a "WW3 apocalypse" is coming, there's nothing stopping you digging a deep bunker, filling it with a ton of food, water, electricity generation, spare hardware (motherboards, CPU's, hard drives, etc) and multi-layered backups of your games & OS, and enjoying your Internet-less DRM-Free games no different than today minus the obvious ability to buy new ones...

You're talking more about issues of compatibility rather than DRM. The key aspect of DRM is that it is an intentional means of preventing you from archiving, installing, and playing your legally-purchased game. This leaves you at the mercy of the rightsholder, who can cut off your access at any time for any reason (and in practice this is a matter of when and not if, since rightsholders don't want to keep authentication servers running forever). Moreover, in most of the world, DRM is protected by law and it is illegal to break it even if you're a legitimate paying customer. This is before we even get into the actual implementation of DRM, which is often intrusive and can cause deeply negative side-effects.

Compatibility issues can be serious impediments to getting older games working, but they are categorically different from DRM. They are not intentional, and in fact in most cases there is great effort made to avoid these problems. Moreover there is usually no legal impediment to circumventing them, and incompatibility can't be used to selectively take away the ability of some people to play the game but not others at the rightsholders whim.

Now I do feel there are legitimately edge cases (for instance, games that include multiplayer matchmaking services but don't include any LAN functionality, meaning when the servers go down multiplayer functionality dies with them) where the design decision isn't intentionally to restrict access, but it is an entirely predictable consequence of that design decision.

To that end, you could say our inability to synthesize vitamin C has been DRM for much of human history, up to the 19th century...

Just imagine yourself in the 1800s, shaking a sailor that's suffering from scurvy and screaming "Stop using DRM!" at the top of your lungs.

That has to be the weirdest definition of DRM ever.

Does your car have DRM because it doesn't work without gasoline or electricity or whatever?

Do you have have DRM because you won'ẗ function for prolonged times without water and food?

Does Earth have DRM as it won't function without the Sun?

To get the basics rights, first educate yourself what DRM actually means and what are its reasons for existence. Then you can better understand whether e.g. electricity or food or water or Sun is DRM.

OP - No it isn't the same.

The clues are in the words RIGHTS and MANAGEMENT.

All about controlling or managing access rights ... restricted usage.

Imagine a PC that has many games installed on it, both GOG and Steam games. Put that PC in a time capsule for 50 years. Just imagine how easy you would be able to play the GOG games on that PC in 50 years, but the Steam games not at all, because you need a current Steam account at that time, and Steam if it still exists, has altogether changed and moved on with the times ... OS supported etc ... so that PC simply cannot do what is required to play those Steam games.

I can't believe people are actually seriously trying to discuss this :D

Our life is DRM. At the end, we don't own it, we are just granted a temporary license of use by the Great Owner !

But discs last like 30 years tops. Get microfilm to preserve your software for the next 10 000 years.

Base 64 encode all the binaries and chisel the result in slabs of granite.

Yeah, imagine if NASA trolled aliens.

When they one day find those discs on Pioneer and Voyager probes, they get all excited to check the content, but end up discovering that they are once again those discs which only contain activation codes!

Why though it's a legit question

Main argument in this arena that makes sense to me is that since Windows has DRM, any game you need Windows for technically has DRM to some degree.

I've got them locked in the Vault and no, it's a hidden Vault.

I do agree that a game that depends on a DRM-ridden platform is, at the very least, "affected by DRM." And I think that if we strive for truly DRM-free gaming, then these games should run on a DRM-free platform too (please GOG support the alternatives!). But I'm a bit hesitant to go so far as to say that the game itself has DRM. Maybe I can copy the game and hack it until it runs fine on Linux or whatever. If the game didn't have any mechanism in place to try and prevent me from doing that, then I guess it didn't really have DRM.

Of course it is important to consider what is possible in practice and what isn't. Maybe you're stuck under a boulder.. legally free to go, not bound by any contract or man-made restriction, yet still a prisoner :) And so if a game depends on a DRM-ridden platform and that dependency is extremely difficult to break in practice, then I wouldn't mind it if people just straight up said the game has DRM. (I could see consoles getting to the point where they have strong DRM and emulating the whole system just isn't going to be viable.. maybe?)