And I've absolutely never gotten that. Yes, there's the Hand Wave of "everything is constantly updated and made better and faster and prettier and more compatible and sparklier, etc, etc, etc" but that just doesn't grok with me, especially for Activesofts/Knowsofts, which are basically archives of recorded information. How does not getting a patch to make them more compatible with the latest model Skillwires degrade the rating of someone using a 5-year-old implant? If anything, that patch would give people with the latest model a Rating boost.
If its some specific bullshit done by the company, like a systemic problem that they intentionally designed into it to create a need for constant corrective patches because otherwise the program tears itself apart, then a hacker should be able to fix that as part of the cracking.
I could try to come up with all sorts of arguments about how any of this makes any amount of sense and maybe one or two might even might make a little bit of sense to you. That's just the story of the SR universe. You're suppose to spend a huge amount of money on fancy electronics where in real life, you could use a computer so old that you could barely give it away.
Then again, you can get most of the programs you would ever want (not counting military programs) for about 70,000Y. That's the price of 1-2 decent pieces of ware. That's a lot, but not that hard to get if you really wanted. If you pirate, it'll be 7000Y upfront and a 700Y monthly charge which isn't that much. It's
weird for software piracy to cost even a token amount and weirder still that apparently piracy effectively is subscription based. That said, the net effect is that same; you get what you want for a trivial investment.
On thing to keep in mind is that if you don't plan on hacking well-protected databases, you don't really need 90% of all programs. The true cost of hacking is buying the skills to actually hack anything worth hacking. It's 44 BP to get Hacking 6, Computer 4, EW 1 and that isn't something everyone has to spare. Even if you had two hackers in the group, it's not really that useful to have two hackers baring special effort on the GM's part.
Honestly, I would ditch program ratings entirely (expect maybe for agents) and just make the matrix entirely skill-based. You'll roll Stat + Skill and what stat and skill depends on what matrix action you're taking. There might be cheap programs you buy/make that merely enable you to take some matrix actions. Like you buy/code an attack program much the same way a street samurai buys a pistol so he can shoot people. You'll have to completely rework the matrix and technomancers to make it all work, but you ought to be doing that anyways.
