1. http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php 2: * http://www.diaryofaninja.com/blog/2012/04/25/cause-for-concern--piracy-on-win

1. http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php 2: * http://www.diaryofaninja.com/blog/2012/04/25/cause-for-concern--piracy-on-windows-phone-7 http://www.diaryofaninja.com/blog/2012/04/25/cause-for-conce... * http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2010/12/windows-phone-7-piracy-materializes-with-freemarketplace/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2010/12/window... * http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/piracy-and-the-apple-app-store/6007 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/piracy-and-the-apple-app-... * http://www.switched.com/2011/01/07/apple-mac-app-store-drm-hacked/ http://www.switched.com/2011/01/07/apple-mac-app-store-drm-h... If I roll my own protection, I can make changes quickly. If I rely on store owner I need to deal with their priorities when they're approaching solution of their cracked scheme (backwards compatibility and minimal effect on store). I started with ASProtect, but eventually decided that people who download my software off of warez websites are not my customers anyway and replaced it with a brain-dead serial number verification, which I could bin-patch even myself. 3: Desktop application != C++ application. C#/WinForms, C#/WPF are desktop applications as well. But yeah, developing decent UI in MFC is quite a bit of pain. Although, you could take some shortcuts with implementing UI with HTML/js, loading them from resources. I did that once, it is possible. Localization is a solved problem for both native and .NET. 4: So? Company policies and UAC doesn't go anywhere with Store. Antiviruses - yeah, those are more painful for regular software. 5: Applies to Store too. If something is wrong with customer's PC, it will be wrong regardless of your path of distribution. Look, software is never simple (unless we're talking about fart apps), but the Store is not some kind of unicorn that alleviates all problems. Yes, certain things will be simpler, but usually the bigger problem is marketing and promotion and for its costs and risks of rejections/removals Store just not worth it.