Partly it was an anti-Wobbler thing. Someone in America or somewhere thought it was real clever to make the game ask you little questions, like “What’s the first word on line 23 on page 19 of the manual?" and then reset the machine if you didn’t answer them right, so they’d obviously never heard of Wobbler’s dad’s office’s photocopier.
reply-- Only You Can Save Mankind, Terry Pratchett, 1992
Makes me sad how many person-years of effort have been wasted over the years on futile dongle-engineering, copy-protection and DRM. They're pretty much all cracked. And the industry keeps insisting on trying!
replyThe industry doesn't want to make software crack proof, they just want to make money. Typically, in the case of games, is is about "when", not "if", they know it will be cracked eventually, but they want to hold long enough to secure their launch sales, which is where they make most of the money. It is even common to remove DRM after a few months, because it is not worth it.
replyAs for enterprise software, pros usually don't want the potential legal trouble associated with cracked software, and dongles are just about not making is easy to violate the licence by accident.