A.Russel is right. There are opinions of the matter of getting very protective of your software and "dont bother, cracking cannot be avoided." I do have to add, that Despite the fact that there is ALWAYS a way around anti-piracy software, some protection is good. The reason for this is that amateurs who don't know much about piracy, but still want to find ways on how to do it themselves can't get around anti-piracy software. Considering the majority of today's society don't know much about programming or even their way around MS Windows; these are the people you will profit from.

If you had absolutely NO protection, then these amateurs have a chance to go "hey, if i delete this file I can spead this game all over the internet with the website I made in Notepad" Of course not so literally, but i think you get the point.

There are only two ways to effectively protect your work.
1. Develop something thats really not all that great nor is it of great demand, but sell it cheap and you could probably profit. Software "Pirates" arent interested in spreading cheap "less than exciting" software.

2. Develop something HARDware based. This obviously isn't going to happen. Expensive to make and expensive to sell, and no one wants to play a game by using a PCI Card (or something of the like) that they have to plug into their motherboard .