We recently coveredValeroa, a tentative new entry into the anti-tamper-tech industry. Valeroa tries to skirt the line of being called a full DRM solution with some non-intrusive choices in its design(which still remains much of a mystery). According to the company, "only a handful of functions are protected by Valeroa; this technique doesn't even require an internet connection, it doesn't read or write the hard drive continuously and "does not limit the number of daily installations or changes of hardware". The company's motto is that games with their protection "Cannot be cracked within reasonable time".

Well, crackers took that as a "Challenge Accepted" type of claim, and took to City Patrol: Police to test Valeroa's claims. The result was that the game was cracked just two days after release. Whether or not this means protection was assured for a reasonable time is something to be discussed between Valeroa, City Patrol: Police's publisher Toplitz, the developer (Caipirinha Games) and other companies that might be in the discussion table to use Valeroa's solution. This wasn't such a high-profile release, either; imagine this was a juicy target, such as any new AAA game, and it's likely the cracking procedure would have lasted even less time.

The launch period of a game is the most important from the sales perspective, and piracy can seriously damage those initial earnings. Several anti-tamper systems have been launched to avoid this, but none seems to be really effective. Denuvo is well know on this front, but its protection has been defeated over and over (and over) again, for example. There's a new anti-tamper technology called Valeroa to fight these issues, and its approach is somewhat different.

As the developers explain, Valeroa "is not a DRM" and it doesn't affect the performance of games because "only a handful of functions are protected by Valeroa". This technique doesn't even require an internet connection, it doesn't read or write the hard drive continuously and "does not limit the number of daily installations or changes of hardware". The most interesting bit comes with its approach to the actual protection, which according to their developers Valeroa "is extremely difficult to crack before and closely after the game release date. The protection becomes a lot easier to crack after a predefined period".