[ryandrake]

The pirates will never pay for your software, and will always work around your countermeasures, no matter how complicated or expensive they were to develop. You're better off investing that money/effort into features that your actual paying customers will pay more for.

[balls2you]

There are users who are pirates and then there are corporate pirates whose businesses are built on copying and pirating popular games and making them look professional. They are the real danger to indie devs not end users in their mother's basement with no money in their pockets.

[chii]

> pirating popular games and making them look professional.

that's not pirating. you cannot own an idea (and i would say software patents aren't good, despite their current prevalence). If the market demands good looking games, i guess as an indie, you either just have to compete, or die out like any other business would.