YankeeJim: Harmless game files.
Correct. Harmless, and in fact, necessary for game play.
YankeeJim: WGT's not about to install anything that would let enterprising hackers modify stuff and cheat. :-)
Let's hope not. Hopefully, WGT has engineered their code to do some checks against outside tampering. Their Registry entries, however, can easily be modified using the Registry Editor built into Windows. (In fact, that's how I solved an early problem with the PCEA display a few months ago.)