You can beef up the protection or you can ignore the issue. Without knowing specifics of your software (language, platform, etc.) it's hard to advice on the pr

You can beef up the protection or you can ignore the issue. Without knowing specifics of your software (language, platform, etc.) it's hard to advice on the protection scheme, but a simple option for compiled Windows binaries would be something like VMProtect (which is what Denuvo protection is based on). This will dramatically increase the amount of effort needed for a crack. On the flip side it may also increase the amount of false positives from anti-viruses and security software, but an EV sig on the binaries and a smaller installation base should easily offset that. Also, it's worth keeping in mind that there are two classes of cracks. One is done for (basically) the street cred and another is the paid-for cracks. The vast majority of cracks are of the first kind, done by people on the warez scene. They tend to go after easy targets and will give up when there's more to the crack than nop'ing a couple of IFs or patching a couple of functions via a proxy DLL. So even a little friction here will go a very long way. Something as simple as periodically re-verifying your license at random intervals using independent copies of your license validation code would be a good start. Ditto for checking the signature on your binaries. Never displaying the result of failed validation immediately, but always delaying it a bit. We are aiming at irritating, frustrating and wasting their time. Despite of some people say, you can cripple your software if you detect it's running an "altered" version. The counter-argument goes that this will cause users of cracked versions assume that your software is of a poor quality, this information will spread and taint your reputation. This is 100% b/s. In reality every single user of cracked software is perfectly aware of incomplete cracks, so when a cracked version malfunctions, they know why. If your program phones back home, e.g. to check for updates, make it report the hash of its binary and a license, and then allow crippling the install remotely. Among other wonderful uses, this allows messing with someone who is in the process of cracking your software, in real-time. Really dirty, but super effective. Or you can do nothing, lay back and relax. But where's fun in that?