According to recent industry reports, . The traditional model of buying a perpetual license key and applying it to a host is obsolete.
Many scripts labeled "VMware license keygen" on public repositories contain malware, ransomware, or cryptojackers that can compromise your host, vCenter, and virtual machines.
To maintain functionality, the environment must periodically communicate with Broadcom to verify entitlement. While "air-gapped" workarounds exist, they involve a manual request-and-response file transfer through the Broadcom Support Portal.