I'm sure many players compile their own programs. How profitable would it be to sell them on the Matrix with copy protection and everything? This is assuming that you undercut Hacker House by about 20%.

No. No one ever has. The reason is because it is so ridiculously profitable that obviously something must prevent it, what with Deckers ever doing anything else and all.

~J

PC hackers? Bad plan, as was mentioned above - it's too profitable, lol. That and "Hacker House" is probably going to come off you.

This and orichalcum factory are generally disliked as aspects of a PC for Shadowrun. However, they are both perfectly valid for "Small Business, Shadow Edition."

Hehehe.

The current retirement plans for my street sam, Katklaw, is to acquire enough to start up and run an orichalcum factory. 2-3 Wage Mages w/ Enchanting (Alchemy) 5(7) working to produce orichalcum non-stop would make him very rich, very quickly. Make the company rich, too.

OK, so ideas on how to stop them please? My players have just latched on to this one, and are set to make a killing.

I've employed the 'do this too often and people are going to start looking for you' tactic, as well as the 'you might affect the SOTA if you're sell too many copies' but they just decided to be real careful, and only sell 20 copies of the black hammer 8 they'd written, to individual buyers who check out via contacts, and to only sell two copies a month, plus a percentage to hacker haven/shadowland for their vetting and hosting services. They're making about 16mill this year (acquired gradually over the year). However, I AM going to roll for SOTA increases on programs every month to see what happens, which will devalue their product. They'll probably still end up with about ten mill though.

This isn't actually that much of a problem in the campaign they're in, and most of that cash is already earmarked for some deltaware they've got coming in any case. But if they do it again, it could become a problem, even at one program a year which is what they're planning. They have the skillz, and the technology (its a high threat campaign as of the last session, by the way, because they've just had a load of downtime to train and set up projects. Before that it was high-resource, medium threat).

Their plan seems pretty reliable, though. Obviously, its not 100% but they aren't drawing attention to themselves except to the people at Shadowland sysops, who I get the impression aren't the sort to routinely sell out their customers.

Open to ideas as to how to control this in a way that doesn't upset the players or feel like I'm railroading them though. I'd just rather the gameworld didn't get its economy busted, and I'm out of ideas!

Throw him for major plot related loops.

A black hammer 8 is major sting operation bait. quite a few people will line up to buy it, and half of them will be FBI/Police/etc. ready to traceroute him and bust his door for illegal software and hardware.

Or, give him a "Misnamed file" case.

Ok, so he sells a copy, and all of the sudden some people who use it start getting Psychotropic IC effects on themselves. he has to clear his name in the decking community (good luck there) and find out who introduced the bad copy of the program.

I would state that writing a program according to SR4 rules would requiring using a lot of GPL'd code. Just because he cobbled it together does'nt mean that he wrote it from scratch. Doing it from scratch would likely require several times as long.
Also, said programs are generally optimized for the decker's own deck. Writing one optimized for multiple deck hardware configurations would be tricky in it's own right.

I think I told one of my players way back when he asked "Can I just copy my program and give it to <X>", something similar.

It was like, <activate bullshit mode> "Sure, you could, but the program you bought was optimized based on your deck's specifications, on <X>'s deck, it would take up the same amount of space but the effective rating would be lower."

An orichalcum factory?

I hope you've got some beefy security for a place like that. Any two bit shadowrun team looking to make a few bucks would kick in the door, blast everyone to death and run off with as much as they could carry.

Even with good security, you'll still have raptors testing the electric fence all the time.

Now here's the real question...

What happens if you take something like this, fail to copy-protect it... Leave no identifying marks... And use a completely anon account to wideband it. (IE: use a 'clean' deck to do the upload, use a tapped dataline.)

Then you die when someone hits you with it a few weeks later.

~J

Another problem with selling a program you've created is that there's nothing stopping the first person you sell BLACK HAMMER to try it out on a convenient target he suddenly owes money to... oops. Or turning around and selling it to people for a fraction of what you're charging. Or, as someone else mentioned, being a cop.

And anything you do add to the code to prevent these things is just going to piss off a buyer who doesn't want a virus being transmitted. "No, it's just code to prevent you from using it on me!" "Sure it is. And broadcast my moves to Lone Star if I mess with anything you don't like."

Hell, what's stopping you from just selling code, claiming it's black hammer, and then absconding with the money?

Learn to format.

Oh course, a PC who has to buy a black hammer 8 will never fall for this stuff though.

PCs don't get to be PCs by being idiots, now do they?

What I'm saying is that by your line of reasoning, your assuming that every person your selling to is an idiot.

Just because a person has to buy a gun doesn't mean they don't know how to use it.

No. But they probably will not know how to manufacture it, and chances are they won't know how to tell if it was made with cheap shitty materials if you've spent attention to making it look right.

But suppose they *do* know how to compile black hammer 8 themselves, they just don't have the time. I really have to go with what was said earlier, if a person is going to be running a high-dig program like that, and they have the money to throw around in order to buy it, it'd be a terrible assumption to bank on them not knowing what they're doing.

Heh, like changing my oil

Not to mention that, fundamentally, programming and decking/cracking are vastly different skillsets.

Does a fighter pilot know how to make air-to-air missiles? Can your average sniper create precision optics? Could Jelly Bryce have built a gun from scratch? Why, then, do you expect someone who can waste your sorry ass in Matrix combat to be able to program to that level?

~J

My question was why, though. What is it about having one skill but not another that makes them a scriptkiddie?

~J

Could you find Black Hammer code while hacking the Lone Star mainframes and use it as a leg up to compile a new program? That would be SO profitable. Of course, if the company you're stealing from specializes in software, chances are it'll have REALLY high-level ice they developed in-house.

…Unless you can deck but can't program.

~J

Computers 6 (Decking 12). Drek-hot decker incapable of programming more than a Rating 3 Black Hammer or a Rating 6 anything else.

~J

Ah, completely forgot about that half specialization caveat for black hammer.

Obviously I'm stretching the definition of "can't program" pretty far there, but my basic point of there being a level where you can't even come close to creating the tools that are at the proper level for you to use stands. Anyone with Computers (Decking) 12 is wasted on only rating 6 programs.

~J

Am glad I kept reading, BH 8 needing computer (programing)16 after all had me on tender hooks
As to stopping the programing factory am please to say I have a list of my additions:
(As I have played a programming factory and therefore created a list to frag my own character )
Time: obvious I know but without a programing suite it really mounts up.
boredom: If they want to punch code all day they can go corp for more money and soon will after the extraction and kink bomb implant.
Money: Base price for all sales on the street is one third its actual price! Also the cost of pure object code utilities are 25% cheaper. At least for hard nuyen. Service and equipment well...thats a matter of negotiation. (Fixer bargaining 8...... )
As already stated, market size.
Difficult to get market credability with Hacker House being so realiable.
Also your likely to get a level one lower utility as the customer trades up or deck parts parts perhapes?
If you want to sell chips instead of straight code? Well I am afraid thats a psyical meet otherwise known as a run.

Spotlite

Connected edge.

~J

Third Party rules help with this too. "The walls have ears" or whatever it was called.

Here's how I would deal with this potential problem as a GM. Refer to the GM Guidelines or Rules if you want.

1. You are God. All things are possible through you. (Wow! Someone has a complex!) Nah, that's a little extreme but it's true. You don't have to allow anything in your world you don't want. However you do have to balance it as to what your players want. Notice I said balance. If you give them everything they want then you feel helpless and the game turns sour. (Ok Troll Sammie why are still running the shadows when you and Lofwyr are the only 2 people with stock in S-K?) But if you don't give anything to your players then they will get sick and stop playing. (Man come on I just need an Ares Predator. Do I have to run the Arcology with a plastic Spork again? YES!) It's all about balance. Which brings me to my next point

2. Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.

-- Job 1: 20-21 (KJV)

Basically don't think you can't undo something. Ok so you're players have Black Hammer 8. They want to sell it and despite teams of Rules Lawyers pouring endlessly over sacred SR tomes they can't find anything to stop them! Panic! Chaos! Ok deep breaths, refer to rule 1. First breakdown your PC problem, nah dilemma, yeah that's nicer. 1. You as a GM don't want you players to have X amount of nuyen. (I use X because you said they were going to get some cyberware you wanted them to have.) 2. What possible problems could this bring about in your world? Think about what your players are doing. I don't know how powerful Black Hammer is in your campaign but if it's the hottest drek out there then it's a problem. Tell your players "Imagine that you have been given a nuclear bomb and that you can easily duplicate it and sell it. Would you? Morals aside think about the practical consequences of your actions. YOU just pushed the SOTA curve. Everything has to evolve now. IC has to get better. You'll have to evolve just like everyone else, but think for a minute if you hung onto it. Kept it secret. You'd be one of the only kids on the block to have a Tuttle Chopper when everyone else has a big wheel."

If that doesn't work just find a way to take it. Not everyone is going to be happy by this turn of events. If your players wrote Black Hammer then they are in more trouble if they stole it. Corps are going to want it not only to use it but to find a way to defend against it. Criminal Organizations are going to want to it for their own purposes (those pesky Asians! ) Do you think they will pay top dollar for it? Nope. (I'll make him an offer he can't refuse.) And hackers! Forget it. Hell people fileshare (hence pirate) music and movies like it's going out of style. You don't think hackers will try to get it from you by some way in the Matrix?

3. The Falling Dragon Butt First Law. This was a law enacted by my AD&D DM when players were acting like jackasses. I think it is self-explanatory but it illustrates a point. Sometimes shit doesn't appear or need to make sense to happen. Maybe that utility has so many uses before the chip burns out (Bad Chip Chummer.) or it degrades with so many uses (Bad Chip Chummer.) Or maybe that shipment of blank chips was contaminated when you copied the Utility to them (Ahh Bad-- forget it.) A Toxic Spirit could have gone berserk and destroyed the only copy you had (Ahh sorry guys I guess Ol' Stinky got away from me ) Hell a plane crash could destroy the entire building. Now these are extreme cases and should only be used sparingly if at all but it is to make a point. See rule one.

I hoped this helped

Pray they have the connected edge, then apply eveything Lazarus just said to their contact. They get hit by a car and enter a coma (mine) or they develope brain cancer (Fade47's and mate it never get old. )
If they paid points for the flaw let them have it.
With a little creative ref'ing, merits are flaws by a different name.
And for completeness vice versa.

Well you know Fix-It I was talking about you!

I let my players make copies and sell em, but if the Local crime org finds out, they want there cut.

Remember: A good rep sometimes means that anyone who knows you have a bad rap is dead.