[amelius]

I'm curious what tricks people use nowadays for software copy protection? Are dongles still a thing? Have people given up on the idea of software protection? (SaaS is probably the best kind of protection if you don't take it too literally)

[rabidrat]

License keys, software phones home to verify the license key, refuses to run if license key not verified. You could hack the software to remove this protection, and for popular software packages people have done this (Windows, Photoshop, etc).

[grishka]

From what I see, software that is capable of working fully offline is a rarity these days. Everything has an activation server.

[toast0]

Dongles are popular in arcade machines (which are mostly just PCs these days)