Whether it's a game or another kind of desktop application, deploying it to your users can be a pain if you can't afford to or don't want to pay the price for the high-end tools. There are alternatives, however. And there are pitfalls.
Since the game my studio works on is an MMO, we had to keep all of the game logic strictly on the server side. This means that the game server is authoritative and the client is merely a "screen" to display what the server is computing.
Still, protecting game assets in the client version of Xenocell is a very important task. Not so much because people can steal our stuff, but also because we use assets that assume such protection and we agreed to abide by their license agreements - such as an adequate level of protection of these assets against 3rd party use.