I'd never play one of those games but the excuse for the kernel modules spying on you is usually anti-cheat not DRM as they are online games.
There are droves of people petitioning Valve to add kernel anti–cheat to CS2.
It's both and the main reason why anti-cheat is needed is the central matchmaking model, which is itself a form of DRM. If people were still hosting smaller community-moderated servers there would not be a need for invasive anti-cheat but people could also pay on cracked servers without paying.