@LukeAlmighty There are even worse solutions. VMProtect is one of them. It essentially creates a custom instruction set and an accompanying VM for it for emulation and runs that on top of x86_64. Denuvo uses it for I think. That's the main reason why bad Denuvo implementations run like shit on powerful hardware.
@LukeAlmighty Packers usually mean software that compresses the binary itself, effectively also obfuscating text included in it. A great example of a packer for binaries is UPX. The binary can be run without any decompression beforehand. Some other things can of course be added to it, creating an anti-piracy solution.
https://upx.github.io/