The team I'm going to play with all have Skillwires, and we all need the same basic skillsofts, so it makes sense that we (being criminals) would strip off the copy protection and pool our resources by storing all our skill softs on a matrix server where we could all download any skill we need when we need it.

• 1) Can you hack the copy protection on skillsofts and share them with the rest of the team?
• 2) If so, what is the threshold for success?
• 3) Do skillsofts need to be custom crafted or "tuned" for each individual?
• 4) If so, can a Cybertechnology lab (Shop) handle that kind of tweaking given a base template?
• 5) Would there be an underground in the matrix that provided these kind of "discount" skillsofts for runners? (I'm thinking the existing rules for negotiation are perfect for this...-10% for being "stolen goods" maybe another -10% for being used).

Any thoughts/ideas?
B.

You can hack the copy protection on any program, skillsofts included. The rules are on p. 228 under "Source Code and Piracy."

As for #3, no the skillsofts are general purpose skills for anyone who has the skillwires to use them. And for #5 you could do that if you wanted to. I'd make a quick roll when people buy their program, perhaps Edge x2 and if they glitch the program's rating is one less than what they expected, if they critical glitch, the program doesn't work at all, but it still passes all tests so they'll think it does right up until they try to use it in the wild.

Or worst case scenario the skillsoft could not only fail to work properly, but lead them to believe they are doing something correctly when they in fact are about to do something very stupid and dangerous indeed. Especially true of skillsofts in things like demolitions, just for any evil gms reading this.

Yeah, a BIG rule change that I miss from older editions is the current hacking of prgrams being so dang easy.

There's little reason for the team Decker to have not burned off a complete collection of rating 6 software for the whole team, or, at the least, given them everything that he already has.

With piracy being so, well, criminally easy, I can't image who software dealers of 2070 stay in business.

Hope that Unwired figures something out about this.

They just need to bring in some sota rules that have software degrade at a point or 2 a month. Then it'll be all a hacker can do to keep up and he'll have to start charging his buddies for their sota software.

I have a house rule that, for every glitch on a program that the hacker didn't code himself, the program gains 1 level of gremlins, cumulative, and on a critical glitch, gains the level of gremlins as well as immediately dropping one rating level.

Well the way that I control it is two-fold, first I figure that as more and more copies of a program starts floating around then Corp Deckers are going to be able to configure their Defenses towards the program in question so Deckers never release their SOTA Attack Programs to the Public Matrix through Napster, ect...


As for sharing with the team, well make sure that everyone involved understands that while installing software the Decker could very easily code a backdoor into their systems, as well as asking the Decker what would she do if one of her team got hacked and her programs started degrading as in my first example?

So far it has worked for me anyways, their is still some program sharing when necessary, but our Decker no longer runs off all her (Rating 6) Programs in order to give them to the team.

I just ruled that glitches in the copyright breaking extended test reduce the rating of the software by one and critical glitches render it unusable. That's kept the hacker from breaking the more important programs (stealth, exploit, etc.). But they did crack a number of the common use stuff at lower ratings (browse, analyze, etc.) but, really, it all saved the team like 2,000 nuyen so I don't worry too much.

That's pretty clever, I like that.

That's not really come up for me yet. No one has tried to distribute cracked software to anyone other than their own team.

just add in a rule (i've seen this one in a few places) that cracking software is basically making one copy, rather than completely removing the copy protection.

I went with the oppose approach. I just assumed that any reasonably competent runner team can get their hands on any program they want, so I made them all free, and just made commlinks more expensive.
It saves a lot of time and space on the character sheet, and the end result is pretty much the same. They're still out a comparable amount of money, they still have every program at the maximum rating they can run, so effectively I'm left with the exact same situation as before.
YMMV.
I do like Jaid's approach, too, though.