It doesn't bother me that SBP uses a dongle, I won't ever be buying it as its way beyond my price range. I do care however if dongles went main stream as I don't want to deal with a stack of the stupid things (and I guarantee they wont all be using the same dongle maker, the big distributors will probably sub contract their own brand.). I am pointing out that these things aren't a magic anti piracy bullet.
As for these things not being hacked, well I would bet money if they were used on some front line games they would get broken pretty fast (it may take a while for the first game as they would need to figure out how it works, but once they do the rest will fall very fast). Hacker competitions don't prove anything as your only going to attract the amateurs. The so called pros wont show up as they don't want to take the chance of being identified and then linked to one of the piracy groups. No matter what, the executable and other files where the security code is embedded are vulnerable as that code can be stripped out one way or another (or the executable rebuilt).
As for why the main groups that enable game piracy haven't bothered with SBP the reasons quite simple. First of the whole thing to these groups is pretty much a game/hobby. There are specific rules, and a score is even kept. They don't make any money from doing it, it in fact costs them money to. The prize is prestige and infamy, which is why they play the game. SBP is a very niche game that most people haven't heard about, and the demand for it is very low. As such breaking it doesn't offer much in the way of a prize for the effort of breaking a new (and highly uncommon) type of protection. Same goes for Wibu/Codemeter who is also unheard of in gaming. Give them reason to though and I'm sure it will happen. I mean they have broken every single other kind of mainstream heavy duty copy protection.
As for dvd vs dongle well a couple of things, first a dvd is harder to loose then a dongle (I am forever misplacing my damn usb flash drive). Also in my country I have the right to duplicate and emulate (and break if i can't emulate it) any software I own. As such I tend to use virtual disks on a virtual drive for the games I own so I don't have to fiddle around with original physical dvds getting damaged. Also you could be an unlucky person which doesn't have any easily accessible usb slots in which case changing dongles would be a problem. Also you may not have enough spare slots, for example my laptop if I was using a 4 port hub (I actually use a 7 port) would be completely filled (mouse, keyboard, joystick, printer, laptop cooler/mp3 player connection, external HD) would use up the 6 total ports (3-1 on the laptop and the 4 ports on the hub). Also what is the life span of a usb dongle?
As for why they are a pain for corporate use? well they are expensive, most of them have to be attached to the computer that will be using the program, they have tended to be single license single computer single program (god help you if you have 2 or more programs each needing one dongle attached). They also tended to get lost, stolen and or broken and need replacing (more expense). This is why a lot of corporations when dealing with them ended up using a broken executable.
Anyhow I'll stop here as I'm dragging the thread off topic. I just had to state that I don't think dongles are the magic anti piracy bullet some seem to think it is. I also don't want to dig to much further into software piracy (I know what I know cause it use to be my job to as a former 'White Hat'). Feel free to respond though if you wish
