# Lower Levels Ledger — full text index

> An unofficial field guide to Probably Stolen, the cyberpunk shopkeeping sim from Questing Goose Studio and tinyBuild: rent, stock, customers and security.

Updated: 2026-10-29

## Probably Stolen

URL: https://probablystolen.games/
Genre: Cyberpunk shopkeeping simulator. Players: 1 player. Platform: Windows PC (Steam).

Probably Stolen is a cyberpunk shopkeeping simulator from Questing Goose Studio, published by tinyBuild and released on Steam on 28 October 2026 for $19.99. You run a storefront on a space station split by wealth, buy from whoever walks in, decide what to sell them, and try to earn enough to buy the shop before the rent outruns you.
It is a shop sim in the register-and-decide tradition: goods arrive with histories, customers arrive with agendas, and the interesting decisions are the ones where profit and survival point in different directions. Nine playable starting scenarios and four difficulty settings set the opening conditions; after that, a run is a weekly argument between cash, reputation and evidence.
This site is an unofficial field guide to those systems. It does not review the game, score it, or host it. It explains how the loop works, what the official material actually confirms, and where the widely repeated numbers came from.

### How to play
- Choose a start you can afford to lose: Nine scenarios are playable, and Apprentice is the one tagged for new players: 550 credits on Normal against a 200-credit first rent, plus a storage bay and sellable stock. Rock Bottom gives you the store and nothing else. Take the cushion first; the rent cycle is easier to learn with one.
- Read the customer before the stock: Security, revolutionaries, fallen elites and Augs want different things from the same shelf. The counter gives you four moves — approve, refuse, report or look away — and the game is explicit that someone is always taking notes.
- Inspect, then price: Cigarettes need a visual check, water needs testing and filtering, weapons need permits and mods, chemicals need recipes, rare items need appraisal. Buying without the matching check is how a cheap lot becomes an expensive week.
- Pay rent before you reinvest: Rent rises over time regardless of how the week went, and one bad purchase or one illegal bust can end the business. Set the next payment aside before you spend on stock.
- Pick the trouble you can manage: Weapons bring inspections, chemicals bring addiction, water brings liability, contraband brings raids. The store page frames specialization as choosing which kind of trouble you are willing to monetise, which is the most useful sentence in it.

### Tips
- Split cash into rent, restock and gamble: Rent is collected every Sunday and rises after every rent day, paid or not. Set the next payment aside first, spend on stock second, and only risk the third bucket.
- Price the consequence, not the item: A margin that ends in a fine, a confiscation or a lost faction is not a margin. If you cannot name what a sale costs after the counter closes, do not make it yet.
- Keep one legal line and one grey line: A clean product pays the rent; a grey one pays for the growth. Running only grey means every week is one inspection away from a gap, and running only clean means the margin rarely covers a rising rent.
- Refusing is a free move: Declining a lot costs you the margin you never had. It is the only decision in the shop that generates no evidence, no reputation loss and no stock.
- Do not use the Aug policy as stress relief: The build publishes six tells and one behavioural shortcut: Augs never haggle. Use the refusal test before the gun, and remember a wrong shot is logged as manslaughter.

### FAQ
Q: What is Probably Stolen?
A: Probably Stolen is a cyberpunk shopkeeping simulator developed by Questing Goose Studio and published by tinyBuild. You run a store on a space station, buy and sell goods of questionable origin, deal with factions and Security, and try to buy out your shop before the rising rent forces your hand.
Q: When did Probably Stolen come out and how much is it?
A: It released on Steam on 28 October 2026 at $19.99, €19.99 or £16.99, with a 10 percent launch discount running for two weeks. The store page listed the discount as ending on 11 November 2026 when this page was checked on 29 October 2026.
Q: What platforms is Probably Stolen on?
A: The official release is the Windows PC version on Steam. The store page lists Windows 10 64-bit, 8 GB of RAM and 1 GB of storage as the minimum, and does not list a console or mobile version.
Q: How many starting scenarios are playable?
A: Nine: Apprentice, Water Merchant, Fence, Gunsmith, Chemist, Hydroponic Farmer, Aquafarmer, Rat Wrangler and Rock Bottom. The start screen shows twelve rows, but three are locked and labelled Work In Progress, and two more exist in the files without being selectable.
Q: Is Probably Stolen multiplayer?
A: No. The store page lists single-player only, alongside Steam Achievements, Steam Cloud and Family Sharing.
Q: Is there a demo of Probably Stolen?
A: There was. A demo ran during Steam Next Fest and was retired when the game launched on 28 October 2026. The Steam store page now offers the full game, and demo-era guides describe an earlier build.
Q: Is there a browser version of Probably Stolen?
A: Not an official one. The browser remake at probably-stolen.online is an unofficial fan project with its own original code and art. It is not published by Questing Goose Studio or tinyBuild. The official game is the Steam release.
Q: Is Lower Levels Ledger an official site?
A: No. Lower Levels Ledger is an unofficial field guide. It is not affiliated with Questing Goose Studio or tinyBuild, it does not host game files, and every factual claim links back to a public source.

## Sources

- Official Steam store page (price, release date, features, system requirements): https://store.steampowered.com/app/4348910/Probably_Stolen__Cyberpunk_Shopkeeper_Sim/
- tinyBuild launch press release, 28 October 2026 (wishlists, demo players, review share): https://www.gamespress.com/TINYBUILD-SMUGGLES-PROBABLY-STOLEN-THE-GRITTY-PIXEL-ART-CYBERPUNK-SHOP
- Steam news post, 27 October 2026 (500,000 wishlists, launch details, demo retirement): https://steampeaks.com/news/678513130127498292
- DualShockers launch-day review (specialization count, Apprentice and Hydroponic Farmer starts): https://www.dualshockers.com/probably-stolen-review-a-repetitive-futuristic-shopkeeping-simulator/
- Official Steam community hub (patch notes and developer posts): https://steamcommunity.com/app/4348910
- Developer site (rent death-spiral description, mechanic summary): https://www.questinggoosestudio.com/en/probably-stolen
- Hotfix 1.0.0.2 (water filter and moisture farm rebalance, 28 October 2026): https://steamcommunity.com/games/4348910/announcements/detail/1847920302232876
- “200,000 Units Sold!” developer post (200k copies, 86k+ concurrent, 28 October 2026): https://steamcommunity.com/games/4348910/announcements/detail/1847920302232244
- Patch note 049 (documented keyboard and mouse binds): https://steamcommunity.com/games/4348910/announcements/detail/1843481262702145
- PC Gamer impressions (demo-era; compares the loop to Papers, Please): https://www.pcgamer.com/games/sim/i-feel-like-im-running-a-corner-store-in-dredd-or-cyberpunk-2077/

## Start here: what to do on day 1

URL: https://probablystolen.games/lore/start-here/
Day one of Probably Stolen, in order: pick a start, open the shutter once, read the queue, inspect before you price, and set aside Sunday rent before you buy anything.

### The day in six beats
A day in Probably Stolen runs in a fixed order: morning report, open the shutter, serve one customer at a time, close, an optional night trip, overnight services, sleep, autosave. That is the whole spine. Everything expensive happens inside it, and almost everything that goes wrong on day one comes from treating the shutter as a break rather than a decision.
The queue is fixed the moment you open. Restocking the display case at midday will not change who is coming; it only changes what they find when they arrive. So the useful question before the shutter is not “what do I want to sell today” but “who is already outside, and what do they want from me”.
The display case decides who walks in, not what you sell. It is a filter, and a loud one: contraband in the case attracts a security inspection. A clean case brings a quieter, poorer crowd. A case full of grey goods brings buyers with money and a queue that includes people taking notes. Both are legitimate openings; only one of them is survivable on day one with no cash buffer.

### Pick a start that matches your patience
Nine starting scenarios are playable: Apprentice, Water Merchant, Fence, Gunsmith, Chemist, Hydroponic Farmer, Aquafarmer, Rat Wrangler and Rock Bottom. The start screen shows twelve rows; three are locked and labelled Work In Progress, and two more exist in the files without being selectable. “Twelve specializations” is a menu count, not a fact about what you can play.
Apprentice is the recommended first run. On Normal it opens with 550 credits against a 200-credit first rent, plus a storage bay and a stock of household goods and food. That ratio — roughly two and a half weeks of rent in hand — is the tutorial. Gunsmith is the opposite lesson: 150 credits against 250 rent, with a Class I permit and stock you cannot legally sell to everyone who asks.
Rock Bottom gives you the store and nothing else: no credits, no kit. It is a second run. Aquafarmer and Rat Wrangler are production starts with their own setup costs, and Hydroponic Farmer starts with equipment and a higher rent line. If you want the quietest opening, take Water Merchant: a product you can test, a filter to sell against, and a customer base that does not require you to lie.

### The first three sales
Your first sales should be boring. Buy small, buy what you can verify, and price at something you could defend out loud. Cigarettes are inspected visually before resale, water is tested and filtered, weapons need permits and modifications, chemicals run on recipes, and rare goods need appraisal — which is a separate, fee-based service, not a button.
The second lesson is that the customer is part of the item. The store page names a security officer fishing for evidence, a revolutionary looking for leverage and a fallen elite testing your usefulness. Three people, one box, three different transactions. Every sale is a four-way decision — approve, refuse, report to Security, or look away — and the game is explicit that someone is always taking notes.
The third is the aftermath. Reputation moves, the crime file grows, stock gets confiscated, or nothing happens. If you cannot name the likely consequence of a sale, you are not ready to make it. That sounds slow. Closing on day nine because a cheap unlabelled lot turned out to be exactly what it looked like is slower.

### What ends a first run
The most common ending is economic. Rent is collected every Sunday and rises after every rent day whether you paid or not. Miss it and the shop loses attractiveness, fewer customers walk in, revenue drops, and the gap widens. There is a grace mechanic and a mortgage branch, but both are ways of paying later, not ways of paying less.
The second is a misjudged item: suppliers overstate value, contraband carries problems you only see after the deal, and a failed inspection turns stock into a fine. The third is a misjudged person: reporting the wrong customer, selling a counterfeit to the wrong elite, or shooting someone who was not an Aug. That last one is logged as manslaughter.
The fourth is drifting into a trade you cannot support. A gunsmith needs permits and clients who expect modifications. A chemist needs recipes and a tolerance for what addiction does to the customer base. Choosing a product line is choosing which inspectors, creditors and angry regulars you will spend the run managing.

### A first-week checklist
Before you buy anything, look at the rent line, count what is left after it, and decide how much of that remainder you are willing to lose. Then buy only what you can inspect, price only what you can defend, and keep a note of who you refused and why. Refusal is free, and it is the only decision in the shop that produces no evidence.
At the end of the week ask three questions. Did the shop clear more than the rent? Did anything I sold create a cost I have not paid yet? Is there a customer I cannot afford to serve again? If the answer to the second or third is yes, fix that before expanding.
Everything else — starts, factions, Augs, appraisal — is detail on top of those three questions. The archive goes through each in turn, but none of it matters more than the habit of pricing the consequence and not just the item.


## Which starting scenario should you pick?

URL: https://probablystolen.games/lore/specializations/
Nine scenarios are playable, not twelve. What each one opens with, which ones carry a higher rent line, and how to choose by credits-versus-rent rather than by theme.

### Nine playable, twelve on the screen
The start screen lists twelve rows. Nine are playable: Apprentice, Water Merchant, Fence, Gunsmith, Chemist, Hydroponic Farmer, Aquafarmer, Rat Wrangler, Rock Bottom. Three are locked and marked Work In Progress — Junker, Organ Dealer, Street Food Vendor — and two more exist in the files without appearing on the screen at all. The developers have said the locked scenarios are coming in free updates.
This matters for two reasons. First, a guide that describes twelve playable starts sends you looking for options that are greyed out. Second, the three locked ones explain the shape of the game’s future: the current nine are the shipped design, and anything you read about organ trading or street food is a plan rather than a build.
What a scenario actually sets is your opening position: credits, stock, equipment, and in some cases rent and faction reputation. It is not a class. You are choosing the first two weeks, not the whole run, and the game does not lock you out of other trades later.

### The nine, by opening pressure
Apprentice is the tutorial: 550 credits on Normal, a storage bay, household goods and food, against a 200-credit first rent. It is the only start tagged Recommended For New Players, and the tag is honest — the buffer is the lesson.
Gunsmith is the sharpest opening in the game: 150 credits against 250 rent, a Class I weapon permit, and stock that brings inspections. You are not poor, you are leveraged, and the first mistake is expensive. Water Merchant sits at the other end: a water trading manual, testing and purification equipment, and water containers, which makes the cheapest inspection loop in the game available from hour one.
Fence starts with a Smuggler’s Bay, contraband stock, higher Black Market reputation, lower Security reputation, immediate access to the Janitor Underground Exchange and a higher rent line. Hydroponic Farmer starts with a manual, hydroponic systems, farming supplies and seeds, and higher rent. Aquafarmer starts with a recirculating system and tilapia stock, also at higher rent. Rat Wrangler starts with a cage, rats and food. Chemist starts with a chemistry manual and lab equipment, and is the only start that also opens the Sector 13 Cartel faction.
Rock Bottom starts with nothing: no credits, no kit, no stock. The store page calls it Extreme Challenge Mode, and it is exactly that. It is also the cleanest test of whether you understand the rent maths, because there is no cushion to hide behind.

### Choose by credits versus rent
The useful comparison is not theme, it is how many rent days your opening cash covers. Apprentice covers two and a half. Gunsmith covers most of one. Rock Bottom covers none. Everything else sits between those poles, and the ones with better equipment — Fence, Hydroponic Farmer, Aquafarmer — pay for it with a higher rent line, which means the equipment has to earn before the first Sunday.
That reframes the choice: pick the start whose first rent you can pay with a bad week. A bad week is not a disaster; a bad week on a start with 150 credits and 250 rent is. If you want to learn the shopkeeping loop, take the buffer. If you want to learn a trade, take the trade and accept that the first Sunday is the exam.
Difficulty is chosen separately from the scenario, and it changes the pressure rather than the shape. Four settings exist: Price Gouge (Cozy), Mark Up (Normal, the default), Thin Margins (Hard) and Red Ink (Challenge, which sits on the second page of the difficulty screen). If you are learning a start, keep difficulty where you are comfortable; changing both at once makes the result unreadable.

### Credits to rent, the number that actually matters
Divide starting credits by the first rent bill and you get how many weeks of runway the start gives you. The credits and rent figures are community-sourced; the ratio is our arithmetic. Gunsmith at 0.6× is the tightest opening in the game; Rat Wrangler at 3× is the loosest.

### Where the three locked starts fit
Junker, Organ Dealer and Street Food Vendor are visible but not playable. They are labelled in the build, and the developers have committed to shipping them in free updates alongside Expeditions and new appraisal items. A guide can describe them as announced content; it cannot describe their balance, because there is no balance to describe yet.
Two further scenarios — Moonshiner and Pharmacist — exist in the files without a start-screen entry. They are not playable either. If a page lists them as options, it is reading data files rather than playing the game, and it should say so.
The practical rule: if the row is not selectable in your build, it is not a choice you can make. Nine is the number that matters until a patch changes it.


## How rent works, and how to stop falling behind

URL: https://probablystolen.games/lore/rent-and-money/
Rent is collected every Sunday and rises after every rent day whether you paid or not. Here is the escalation, the grace problem, and the three-bucket rule that survives it.

### The rule that shapes every decision
Rent is collected every Sunday, and it rises after every rent day whether you paid or not. That second clause is the whole game. You are not managing a bill; you are managing a bill that gets more expensive because time passed, including time you spent failing to pay it.
The developer’s own description of the failure state is unusually direct: miss the payment and the shop loses attractiveness, fewer customers walk in, revenue drops, and the gap widens. So a missed rent is not a one-week setback. It is a permanent cut to the traffic that was supposed to pay the next one.
The buyout is the way out. On Normal the property is valued at 12,000 credits, and the price stays flat until day 50 before climbing daily. That flat window is the design’s real message: the early game is for accumulating against a fixed target, and the late game is a race against a target that is now moving.

### The measured sequence, and the stacked bill
Players measuring the Normal rent line report 200 → 210 → 220: five percent per week, not the 4.5 percent one widely copied guide states. The same log shows a 420 bill after a missed week, which is the unpaid amount rolling forward and compounding rather than being forgiven.
That is player measurement, not an official table. Keep it separate from the official policy above: the developer says rent rises whether you paid or not, and the measurement tells you what that looks like at 200 credits. Do not assume the sequence holds at every difficulty — the difficulty presets change the pressure, not the formula we can see.

### Margin is not profit
The number on the sale is not the number you keep. Between buying and banking, an item can be confiscated, fined, complained about, or simply sit in storage while the rent clock runs. A 40 percent margin on a box you sell in two days is a different object from a 90 percent margin on a box you sell in three weeks.
This is why inspection matters more than the price field. Suppliers overstate value, contraband carries problems you only notice after the deal, and your margin depends on how well you assess what is in front of you. Assessment is where margin is created; pricing only decides who captures it.
A useful habit is to price every lot in three numbers: what you paid, what you expect, and what you lose if it is as bad as it could be. If the third is larger than the first, the lot is not an opportunity, it is a loan with an unknown rate. That is reasoning, not a formula from the game — the game does not publish expected values, and neither should a guide.

### The three-bucket rule
Every Sunday, split cash into three buckets. The first is the next rent: set it aside before you are tempted to treat it as working capital. The second is restock: enough for a normal week of verified goods. The third is the gamble bucket, the only money allowed to go on unverified lots, rare items, or a recovery bet.
The sizes are yours; the order is not. Rent first, restock second, gamble last. Players who reverse it are not reckless, they are optimising for the visible number — stock on the shelf — instead of the invisible one, which is the date the landlord expects to be paid.
The rule also answers the most common mid-run question cleanly: can I afford this? If the purchase has to come out of rent or restock, the answer is no, however good the margin looks. If it comes out of the gamble bucket, the answer is yes, and you have already decided what losing it means.

### When to take the big bet
There is a point in most runs where playing safe stops working: the rent line has risen past what a normal week clears, and the safe line no longer covers the fixed cost. The store page describes exactly this fork — play it safe, or take a big bet to get back in the black. The bet is rational there and irrational earlier, because earlier you still had a buffer to protect.
Before taking it, write down what the bet is. A big lot of verified goods is a bet on demand. A rare item you cannot appraise is a bet on your own judgement. A counterfeit relabel is a bet on nobody checking. Those are three different risks, and only the first is mostly under your control.
After the bet, do not immediately take a second one to recover from the first. That pattern is how a survivable week becomes a lost shop. The correct move after a loss is usually to shrink: fewer lines, cheaper stock, faster turnover, until the rent line is covered again.

### Failure modes worth naming
Reinvesting everything feels like growth and is actually a liquidity problem with good branding. Keep enough cash that a confiscation does not also become an eviction.
Pricing to win every haggle is the second. Every bargain has a trade-off, and a customer who feels cheated remembers. A slightly worse price on a repeat buyer is often the cheaper option.
The third is holding illiquid stock because it was expensive. Cost is not a reason to keep something; it is a reason you already made a mistake. If it cannot be sold at a price the market will bear, the useful question is what it can be converted into before Sunday.


## Buy the shop outright or take the mortgage?

URL: https://probablystolen.games/lore/buyout-and-mortgage/
The buyout is the win, priced at 12,000 credits on Normal and flat until day 50. The Loan Shark’s mortgage gets you there sooner for more money. The arithmetic, and when each is right.

### What winning actually requires
Probably Stolen has one win condition: buy the building. On Normal the property is valued at 12,000 credits, and the price stays flat until day 50 before climbing daily. Every other system — reputation, crime file, Aug policy — exists to keep you alive long enough to reach that number.
The flat window is the most important structure in the game. It means the first fifty days have a fixed target, which is why early compounding matters more than early optimisation. A shop that clears 200 credits a day for forty days is closer than a shop that clears 400 for ten and then loses a week to an inspection.
It also means the late game is a different game. Once the price starts climbing daily, waiting costs money at an accelerating rate, and the decision stops being “can I afford the buyout” and becomes “can I afford to keep waiting”.

### The mortgage branch
The Loan Shark offers a mortgage: a down payment now, weekly payments after, and the deed at the end. It converts a single large number into a schedule, which is exactly what a shop with steady traffic needs and exactly what a shop with unstable traffic should avoid.
The arithmetic, using community figures for the Normal preset and our own multiplication: the mortgage totals 13,160 credits against 12,000 outright. A mortgage is never cheaper — it is a fee for time, and the only question is whether the time is worth 1,160 credits to you. If the weekly payment plus rent is still covered by a normal week, the mortgage buys you the flat-price window and is usually the safer path. If it is not covered, you have converted a target into a second rent, and the failure state is now two ways to lose.
Run the check in the same currency the game uses: one normal week’s takings. If the mortgage payment is less than a quarter of that, it is comfortable. If it is more than a third, one bad inspection ends the plan.

### When to buy outright
Buy outright when you can pay the full price and still cover the next two rent days. That second condition is the one players skip. The buyout ends the rent, but it does not end the costs that arrive between the purchase and the next payday, and a shop with zero cash and a fully owned building can still be closed by a confiscation.
Outright buying is also the correct choice when your margin is thin and stable. If you are running a legal, low-margin line — water, food, household goods — the mortgage fee is a meaningful percentage of your weekly profit, and the schedule adds risk you do not need. Save longer, pay once.
If the price has already started climbing, the calculation flips: every day of waiting adds cost, and the mortgage’s fixed down payment may be cheaper than the climb. This is the one situation where paying a fee for time is clearly correct.

### What both paths require
Both paths require the same three things: rent paid on time every Sunday, a crime file that stays under the arrest threshold, and a customer queue that still contains people with money. The buyout is not a separate strategy; it is what happens if those three hold for long enough.
That is why the endings page matters more than the buyout page. Most runs do not fail at the purchase; they fail at the crime file, at a faction line, or at a Sunday that arrived with no cash. The purchase is the last decision, not the hard one.


## What to do with the person at the counter

URL: https://probablystolen.games/lore/customers/
Every sale is a four-way decision: approve, refuse, report or look away. How the queue is set before you open, and why the customer is part of the item.

### The queue is decided before you open
The customer queue is fixed when you open the shutter. Restocking the display case at midday does not change who is coming; it only changes what they find when they arrive. This single rule turns the shop from a reaction game into a preparation game.
The display case decides who walks in, not what you sell. It is a filter: contraband in the case attracts a security inspection, and a clean case brings a quieter, poorer crowd. So the case is a promise about the kind of shop you are, and the queue is the reply.
Practically, that means the last thing you do before opening should be checking the case, not the price list. If the case says “grey goods, high margin”, expect buyers with money and a security officer with a notebook. If it says “water and cigarettes”, expect a queue you can serve with one hand and a margin you can defend.

### Four customers the store page names
The official description gives three examples and one category: a security officer fishing for evidence, a revolutionary looking for leverage, a fallen elite testing whether you are useful, and the Augs — people taken over by a rogue AI chip who look like everyone else until they do not.
Read them as four intentions rather than four costumes: enforcement, politics, status and predation. An enforcement customer is buying evidence as much as goods. A political customer is buying capability. A status customer is buying a story about themselves. A predatory customer is buying access to you.
That framing matters because the same item has a different value to each. A weapon sold to a status customer is a trophy; sold to a political customer it is capability; sold to enforcement it may be a trap. The item did not change. The consequence did.

### Approve, refuse, report, look away
The four verbs are the game. Approve is the default and generates the most downstream effects. Refuse is the safest and costs you the sale. Report is the only move that converts a customer into reputation with one faction at the expense of another. Look away keeps the sale and the relationship but leaves a record you did not write.
A useful discipline is to decide your default before the customer arrives. If your default is approve, you will approve under pressure. If your default is refuse, you will refuse profitable business. Pick the default that matches the run you are trying to have, and treat every exception as a decision you have to justify afterwards.
The four verbs also carry different evidence costs. Reporting writes a line in your favour and a line against you. Looking away writes nothing, which is not the same as writing nothing down — the sale is still in someone’s ledger.

### Reputation has two ledgers
Six factions track you from −200 to +200: Lower Levels, Upper Levels, Security, Black Market, Revolution, and the Sector 13 Cartel, which only the Chemist start opens. Reaching −100 with four of them ends the run — and the endings differ: a mob, a bomb, an arrest, or a Cartel retirement.
That is not flavour, it is the shape of the system. Every faction you please is a faction whose rivals now have a reason to watch you, and every report is a deposit in one ledger and a withdrawal from another. You cannot max all six; the design does not allow it.
The practical implication is to pick a lane before the run forces one on you. A shop that reports consistently has protection and a thin, legal, low-margin stock. A shop that never reports has good suppliers and a growing file. Both are playable. A shop that alternates is a shop nobody protects.

### Three hard cases
The obvious plant. A customer asks for something specific, pays without haggling and lingers. The temptation is to over-serve them because the transaction is easy. Complete the sale normally and change nothing else: no extra stock on display, no comment about suppliers, no second meeting.
The regular who is short. A discount that is recorded as a discount is a business decision. A discount hidden inside a mislabelled item is evidence you generated for free.
The elite who wants counterfeit. This is the highest-margin, highest-variance request in the game: the store page explicitly invites you to profit from arrogant elites by selling them fakes. The risk is not the sale, it is the discovery — and the crime file remembers.


## How to spot an Aug, and when to shoot

URL: https://probablystolen.games/lore/augs/
Augs are people taken over by a rogue AI chip. Six official tells, one behavioural shortcut — they never haggle — and the manslaughter cost of being wrong.

### What the game actually says
The premise is short. A sentient AI chip went rogue and took its hosts with it. Augs look like everyone else until they do not. Every faction agrees on shoot-on-sight, and you have the gun to enforce it. Shooting a human is logged as manslaughter, which is the sentence that makes the mechanic a decision rather than a chore.
The build ships six official tells: unusual pupils, an uncanny expression, a visible chip, unnatural stillness, twitching, and clothing that does not match their faction. Robotic or over-formal speech is a further signal that appears in the same material. Those are the tells the game gives you, not a fan list.
There is also a scanner: it reports only “AUG DETECTED” or “No Aug detected”, costs 25 power, and works once per customer. It is a second opinion, not an oracle. A guide that calls it 100 percent reliable is wrong about the one thing that matters.

### The cheapest test in the game
Augs refuse every price negotiation. Not sometimes — every time. That single behaviour is the most reliable check available, and it costs nothing, because a normal customer will haggle and an Aug will not move.
Use it in order. Offer a price. If they haggle, they are human and the transaction continues. If they refuse to engage at all, you have a signal, and you can escalate to the scanner or to a visual check before deciding anything irreversible.
The value of this test is that it is procedural rather than perceptual. You do not need to read a face or judge a twitch; you need to notice an absence. Absences are easier to be consistent about, and consistency is what keeps a shooting policy from becoming a mood.

### Why this is a trap with a margin
The decision is asymmetric. Shoot an Aug and you have done what the station asked, probably earning standing with everyone. Shoot a customer who was not an Aug and you have killed a paying customer in your own shop, with a manslaughter entry and a faction cost. Let an Aug walk and you have kept the sale, possibly kept your licence, and failed the one policy nobody disagrees about.
Most players resolve this by shooting rarely and early, or late and never. Both are coherent. The failure state is the middle: shooting sometimes, by mood, with no rule you could state afterwards.
There is a commercial angle the store page implies rather than states. Augs are customers, and a shop that serves them has a customer base nobody else will serve. That is real margin and real risk, and the game does not pretend otherwise.

### A procedure you can defend
First, separate suspicion from evidence. Suspicion is a feeling about a customer; evidence is something you could describe to a security officer without adjectives. Second, prefer reversible moves: refusing service, delaying a sale, or reporting are all reversible in the sense that they do not end a life. Shooting is not.
Third, decide the shop’s policy before the first suspicious customer and write it as one sentence. “I shoot when I am certain” and “I never shoot” are both defensible. “I shoot when I am annoyed” is not a policy.
Fourth, if you do shoot, treat it as a transaction with a receipt. Note who saw, which faction gained, which lost, and whether the interrupted sale was worth more than the standing you gained. That habit is worth more than any tell list.

### After the shot
The immediate aftermath is administrative: a customer is gone, a sale did not happen, and a line is written. The delayed aftermath is the one that matters. Factions that approve may reward you; factions that depended on that customer may not.
If you run a legal, high-reputation shop, an unnecessary shooting is the most expensive mistake available. It converts your best asset — the assumption that you are a legitimate business — into evidence. If you run a grey shop, the calculus is different and arguably easier: you already have a file.
Either way, do not shoot to recover a bad week. The policy is about Augs, not about stress.


## How to spot fake cigarettes, food stamps and Immunivax

URL: https://probablystolen.games/lore/items-and-appraisal/
Three items can be caught as counterfeits with the inspection panel, and appraisal is a separate fee-based service. What to check, and what a margin really is.

### Every item is a claim
Stock does not arrive as a fact. It arrives as a proposition from someone who wants your money. Suppliers overstate value, customers push their luck, and contraband often carries problems you only see after the deal. Your job is not to buy goods, it is to buy claims and then test them.
The game gives each category a different verification verb. Cigarette packs are inspected visually before resale. Water must be tested and filtered. Weapons require permits and modifications. Chemicals depend on closely guarded recipes. Rare items need appraisal, and appraisal is a separate service with its own fee — it is not a button you press on every item for free.
That list is also a cost list. Each verification takes time, tools or knowledge you may not have on day one, which is why the start you pick decides which mistakes you can avoid.

### Three inspectable counterfeits
Hemingway Cigarettes, Food Stamps and Immunivax Injectors are the three items that can be caught as counterfeits through the inspection panel. Each has its own tick-box list rather than a single “is it fake” switch, which is the point: the game is teaching you to look at specific features, not to trust a feeling.
For cigarettes, the panel is about the physical pack — seal, lettering, colour, logo. For food stamps, it is the document itself. For Immunivax, it is the injector. The exact boxes differ per item; what generalises is the habit of running the panel before you price, every time, including when the seller seems honest.
A failed inspection is not just a lost sale. Selling a known counterfeit moves the problem into the crime file and into your reputation, and the store page warns about mob justice on top of Security.

### Three ways to move a bad lot
The store page names three: cut the product’s quality, relabel counterfeit goods as genuine, or fence discounted stolen goods. Each converts a bad purchase into a saleable one, and each carries a different consequence.
Cutting quality is the quietest. You earn a little more per unit and risk the customer noticing; the cost is reputation, slow and cumulative. Relabelling counterfeit is louder: it is a lie with a paper trail. Fencing stolen goods is the most explicitly risky — the discount is real and so is the chance that Security reaches you.
All three convert a stock problem into a relationship problem. You are not fixing the item; you are deciding who absorbs the loss.

### Pricing and the haggle
Haggling is a core verb with a caveat the store page states plainly: every bargain comes with a trade-off. Winning the negotiation may cost the relationship, the repeat visit, or the customer’s willingness to bring you good stock later.
Price for the customer in front of you rather than for the item. A regular who brings verified stock is worth more than the extra credits you could squeeze out of them. A one-off buyer with an urgent need is the correct target for a firm price. The game does not publish elasticities, and any guide quoting exact optimal markups is describing a patch and a difficulty.
Refuse to sell at a price that makes the sale a loss once risk is included. If a unit is likely to generate a complaint, a return or a reputation hit, the correct price is higher than the one that ignores those costs, even if the customer walks.

### Inventory as a balance sheet
Expansion is the reward loop: keep the rent paid and you can expand, run multiple businesses, and unlock new merchandise and production opportunities. Every purchase still has to earn its keep, which means new capacity is a new fixed cost before it is a new income.
Before expanding, check that current lines turn over without you babysitting them. A line that only sells because you constantly reprice it will double your attention cost and not your return. A line that sells itself is a candidate.
Keep dead stock visible. Every shop sim produces a shelf of things you cannot sell and cannot throw away; here that shelf has a rent cost, a storage cost and, if any of it is grey, an evidence cost. Clearing it at a loss is often the highest-return move available.


## Contraband, inspections and the crime file

URL: https://probablystolen.games/lore/contraband-and-security/
The crime file has three thresholds — a fine under 300, arrest at 300, execution at 1,500 — and bribes add a line rather than erasing one. How to run a grey line without losing the shop.

### Where contraband comes from
Contraband enters the same way everything else does: someone walks in and offers it. Suppliers overstate value, customers push their luck, and stolen goods come discounted if you believe Security will not reach you. That clause is the whole trade. Contraband is not a different item, it is the same item with a risk attached, priced by the seller’s urgency rather than the item’s quality.
The game gives you the alternatives: hide stolen goods and contraband from the authorities, or bribe your way out if you get caught. Both are intended play. Neither removes the exposure; they change when it is realised.
And the display case matters here too. Contraband in the case attracts a security inspection. The case is not storage, it is a shop window with consequences.

### The crime file, in numbers
Crimes accumulate on a Security case file, and the thresholds are explicit: under 300 is a fine, 300 to 1,499 is arrest, 1,500 and above is execution. Bribes do not erase the crime — they add a “Bribery” line to the same file. So the bribe is not a reset, it is a second entry with a price.
This changes the maths of every grey sale. You are not asking “can I get away with this once”, you are asking “how much room is left under 300 before the next mistake becomes an arrest”. A shop that treats the file as a buffer spends it deliberately. A shop that treats it as a rumour discovers the threshold by crossing it.
The file also explains why a high-reputation legal shop should never touch grey stock. It converts the shop’s best asset — the assumption of legitimacy — into a number that Security is already tracking.

### Inspections follow the product line
Weapons bring inspections. Chemicals bring addiction. Water brings liability. Contraband brings raids. Four failure modes on four inventories, and they do not substitute for each other.
Weapons inspections are a paperwork problem: permits and modifications are part of the trade, and a lapsed permit turns a gunsmith into a permanent audit risk. Chemicals are a demand problem: addiction is a property of the product, so your best customers are also your least stable ones. Water is a quality problem: it has to be tested and filtered, and selling it untreated is liability with a paper trail.
Contraband is a discovery problem. It does not hurt until it is found, and then it hurts a lot, which makes it the most tempting line for a player behind on rent and the most punishing for a player already being watched.

### The bribe question
Bribes are confirmed as a mechanic and not confirmed as a formula. Official material says you can bribe your way out; it does not publish a price, a success rate, or a limit. Any guide quoting a bribe table is working from a specific build and difficulty.
The strategic reading is still useful. A bribe converts a confiscation into a cash cost plus a new crime-file line. The right time to bribe is when the stock is worth more than the cash and the file has room. The wrong time is when the cash is your rent, or when the line would push you over 300.
If you cannot afford the bribe and cannot afford the confiscation, the real mistake happened earlier: you took a lot whose downside you could not cover.

### A risk register for one shop
Keep three lines in your head: what is on the shelf that would upset an inspector, who knows it is there, and what you lose if it disappears today. If any line is blank, you are not managing risk, you are hoping.
Then set an exposure ceiling before the week starts. A shop that can absorb one confiscation has a strategy. A shop that cannot is one inspection away from a rent gap, and one illegal bust can be all it takes.
Finally, remember that the cheapest risk management in the game is refusing a lot. It costs the margin you never had, and it is the only move with no downside except the deal itself.


## Six factions, reputation and the −100 line

URL: https://probablystolen.games/lore/factions/
Six factions track you from −200 to +200, and −100 with four of them ends the run. How to choose a patron, what licences buy, and why consistency beats optimisation.

### The six that are watching
Six factions track you from −200 to +200: Lower Levels, Upper Levels, Security, Black Market, Revolution, and the Sector 13 Cartel, which only appears on the Chemist start. Reaching −100 with four of them ends the run, and the ending depends on which four: a mob, a bomb, an arrest, or a Cartel retirement.
That is a coherent design: factions are the access layer. They gate stock, prices and protection, and they charge for it in loyalty. There is no published list of exclusive deals, and this guide does not invent one; what is published is the range, the threshold and the fact that reputation buys access and protection while painting a target.
What can be said without inventing is structural. Security wants evidence. The Black Market wants discretion. Revolution wants leverage. The Upper Levels want status and can pay for it. The Lower Levels want someone who does not treat them as a rounding error. The Cartel wants whatever the Cartel wants, and you only meet them as a chemist.

### The −100 line changes the maths
Reputation is not a score to maximise, it is a position with four ways to fail. Because the run ends at −100 with four factions, the correct question is never “who do I like” but “which two can I afford to lose”. A shop that tries to stay neutral with everyone drifts toward −100 with everyone, which is the only outcome that guarantees the worst ending.
The practical implication is to pick a patron early and let the others fall. A security-aligned shop reports, keeps clean stock and sells to institutions. A black-market shop hides, discounts and sells to people who cannot use the front door. Both are coherent. The incoherent version is a shop that reports on Monday and fences on Tuesday, because the second behaviour invalidates the first.
Concentration also compounds. One patron who gives you exclusive stock is worth more than three who tolerate you, because exclusive stock is a margin nobody else can undercut. The cost is that your patron’s enemies become yours, and that cost should be priced before you accept the first gift.

### Licences and the legal line
Licences are progression: advanced licences unlock the underground market, and the Gunsmith start begins with a Class I weapon permit because that trade cannot operate without one. That makes a licence capital rather than a formality. It costs money and buys access, and the access is worth more once you have stock to use it on.
The legal line is therefore a business-model choice. A licensed shop can charge a premium for legitimacy and pays for it in compliance. An unlicensed shop avoids the fee and pays for it in exposure. The store page phrases this as choosing what kind of trouble you are willing to monetise.
The rule that survives patches: do not buy a licence you cannot use this week. A permit for a trade you have no supplier for is a fixed cost with no revenue, and fixed costs are what end runs.

### What we do not know
We do not have a confirmed list of exclusive deals, a reputation gain table, or a faction-by-faction ending list. Official material does not publish them, and this archive does not fill the gap with invented numbers. If you need those figures, they exist inside your build and not in public documentation yet.
What we can offer is the reasoning that survives a patch: consistency is worth more than optimisation, a patron is a commitment rather than a bonus, and the only reputation that matters is the one held by the people whose stock you need next week.


## How many endings does Probably Stolen have? 17

URL: https://probablystolen.games/lore/endings/
Two wins and fifteen losses, according to two independent transcriptions. The full list, the four failure systems, and why other pages say 15 or 14.

### The number, and why it is disputed
Seventeen: two wins and fifteen losses. That count comes from a second independent transcription with its own screenshots, and it corrects the fifteen-entry list that circulated first. The two entries the first list missed are Assassinated, triggered by Upper Levels reputation at −100, and No Permit, triggered by having no vendor permit when enforcement starts.
The confusion is structural, not careless. Three different endings share the title BOMBED (Lou’s debt, a missing toy, and the Revolution at −100) and two share BUYOUT (cash and mortgage paid). A page that counts titles instead of entries lands on fourteen, and a page that copied the first list lands on fifteen.
Both transcriptions are community work. Official material confirms only that buying the store is the win, that 1.0 added a stats screen, and that multiple loss states exist — including eviction and arrest.

### The full list
The triggers below are transcribed from in-game text. Read them as a map of the systems rather than as a checklist: every loss is one system reaching its limit.

### The four failure systems
Money: rent rises after every rent day, paid or not. Factions: −100 with four of six ends the run, and Upper Levels is the one most lists forget. Crime: the case file arrests at 300 and executes at 1,500. Augs: shooting a human is logged as manslaughter, and the Augmented ending waits on the hard modes.
Two endings sit outside those four. Sentinel Collapse is a perk-driven medical timer, and Meltdown is a machine-integrity failure — both are self-inflicted, and both are avoidable if you read what you installed.

### Cheap endings and expensive ones
Cheap: shooting on a hunch, selling a counterfeit you already knew was fake, taking a recovery bet out of the rent bucket. All three are prevented by a rule written before the pressure arrives.
Expensive: the fifty-day endings. If the rent line has been covered by less than a fifth for three weeks, you are already in one. The time to act was two weeks ago; the second-best time is today.


## Official release check: demo, Steam and fan builds

URL: https://probablystolen.games/lore/official-vs-fan/
One official build, Steam app 4348910, version 1.0.0.2. The Next Fest demo is retired, the browser remake is a fan project, and the dated numbers mean what they say.

### The official channel
Probably Stolen is developed by Questing Goose Studio in Montreal and published by tinyBuild. The official release is the Steam version, app 4348910, released 28 October 2026 at $19.99 / €19.99 / £16.99, with a 10 percent launch discount running to 11 November. The store page is authoritative for price, platform and current state.
The listing links the developer’s community channels, which is how you check whether an announcement is real. If a page claiming to be official cannot be reached from that listing, it is not official.
System requirements are modest and Windows-only: Windows 10 64-bit, an Intel Core i3 or equivalent, 8 GB of RAM, a GTX 650 Ti or equivalent, DirectX 10 and 1 GB of storage. The game ships in eight languages — English, German, Japanese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, French, Spanish (Spain) and Polish — with interface and subtitle support only, and no voiced dialogue in any of them.

### No Traditional Chinese, no controller
There is no Traditional Chinese version. The store lists Simplified Chinese, and zh-TW and zh-HK players get the English build. The Traditional Chinese on this site is an unofficial localisation made by the editorial team, not a game language, and the footer says so.
There is no controller support flag, and Steam Deck status is Playable rather than Verified. Deck play needs a community layout or the touchscreen, and mouse-driven inspection panels are the awkward part. Any guide promising Verified status or gamepad support is describing a build that does not exist.
The current build is 1.0.0.2, which shipped a launch-day hotfix. The visible changes were price cuts rather than features: the Water Filter went from 50 to 25 credits and the Moisture Farm from 650 to 350, both “as per community feedback”. That is the kind of detail that tells you whether a page was written from the build or from the demo.

### The demo is gone
A demo ran through Steam Next Fest and was retired when the game launched. The 27 October Steam post said it would come down with 1.0 the following day, and the current store page offers the full game rather than a demo download. If you find a “Probably Stolen demo” download on a third-party site now, it is either an old build or something else.
This matters for guides as well as players. Much of the writing about this game was produced during the demo, when the available content, the start roster and the balance were different. The demo-era build did not have the buyout ending, vending machines, the full storyline or the achievement set. A demo-era guide is not wrong, it is dated.
The demo’s scale is documented: more than 660,000 unique players, a peak of nearly 40,000 concurrent players during Steam Next Fest, and more than 500,000 wishlists before launch. Those are tinyBuild’s figures as of 28 October 2026, and they describe the demo, not the released game.

### Numbers, with dates attached
The figures most often quoted come from one document: the tinyBuild launch press release of 28 October 2026. It reports over 500,000 wishlists, a Next Fest peak of nearly 40,000 concurrent players, over 660,000 unique demo players, and Overwhelmingly Positive reviews at 98 percent for the demo.
The released game has a separate figure. The developer reported 200,000 copies sold and more than 86,000 concurrent players on day one, which is a dated claim from the studio, not a live counter. When this page was last checked, on 29 October 2026, Steam showed Overwhelmingly Positive at 96 percent of 1,688 reviews. That number moves.
Metacritic has no aggregate score for the game — only two critic reviews, at 70 and 65. Any site quoting a Metascore is inventing one, and any site quoting a “current” review percentage without a date is quoting an old page.

### The browser remake is a fan project
The browser-playable fan remake at probably-stolen.online is an unofficial project with its own original code and art. It is not published by Questing Goose Studio or tinyBuild, it is not a port, and it does not contain the official game. This site links to it because it is a useful way to feel the loop in a tab, and we label it every time.
If you want the real thing — the nine playable starts, the faction thresholds, the Aug policy, the endings — the Steam release is the only place to get it. A fan remake is an interpretation. It can teach you the shape of the decisions; it cannot tell you what the official build does in week six.
The same rule applies to this site. Lower Levels Ledger is unofficial, not affiliated with Questing Goose Studio or tinyBuild, does not host files and does not sell anything. Every factual page names its source and the date it was checked.


## Appraisal: how it works, with the numbers

URL: https://probablystolen.games/lore/appraisal/
The appraisal board opens on day 8: four ranks, six grade bands, three valuation items and a fee that pays for accuracy. The full loop, with community-sourced tables.

### How you join
An Appraisal Board member visits on day 8 (day 5 if you skipped the intro). The join fee is 85 credits on Cozy and Normal, 170 on Hard and 255 on Challenge — players report these figures, the game does not print them anywhere public. Declining is permanent for that run; asking to come back later returns the offer in seven days.
After joining, appraisal customers only arrive while a board certificate sits in the display case. The case is the filter again: no certificate, no customers. Each customer brings two to four items of a single unlocked type, so the job is repetition with small variations, not a trolley of mixed goods.

### Ranks, fees and refusals
Payment is a percentage of the estimate you sent, plus a base fee by rank. The percentages and bases below are community-sourced; the design detail that matters is the refusal column. Promotion makes you stricter, not more forgiving: a Senior appraiser is not allowed to submit a Mediocre estimate at all.
Promotion runs on perfect estimates — 10 from Junior to Appraiser, 15 to Senior, 25 to Master on Normal — plus a fee of 106, 128 and 149 credits on Cozy or Normal. An estimate is graded by distance from true value: Perfect is 95–105 percent, and anything below 50 or above 150 is refused outright.

### Grade bands
The bands are symmetrical around the true value, which is why a good appraiser thinks in percentages rather than in credits. Refusal outside 50–150 percent is a hard gate: the customer says you clearly do not know what you are doing and leaves, and you lose the fee and the time.

### The three valuation items
Each item is a base value plus modifiers, with a floor that protects you from a catastrophic estimate. The numbers below are community-sourced and internally consistent, which is the best that can be said until the developers publish a reference.
The Ribwich double-patty at +800 and the Plasma Cartridge IGN maker mark at +750 are the two outliers worth memorising: a single tick-box moves the value more than the base price of either item.

### Why it pays, and when to skip it
A perfect estimate on a 320-credit hand at Junior pays 68 credits — a third of the item’s value for a few seconds of counting. At Master the same estimate pays more, which is why the profession compounds: rank raises both the base fee and the share.
Take it if you like arithmetic and stable income. Skip it if you are behind on rent: the board fee is a fixed cost, the customers only come with a certificate in the case, and a bad estimate costs time as well as money.


## Skip Intro vs the tutorial: what actually changes

URL: https://probablystolen.games/lore/skip-intro/
Skipping the intro is not a shortcut — it moves Odin to day 2, the Appraiser Board to day 5, the Mentor to day 12, starts events and the newspaper on day 1, and makes one achievement unreachable.

### What the choice actually is
The intro is a scripted tutorial: fixed visits, a guided first sale, the Mentor explaining systems. Skipping it does not delete content so much as move the calendar forward, and the fenced-off content is the scripted days themselves.
Four starts always skip the intro — Fence, Rock Bottom, Gunsmith and Chemist — so they begin with the handbook and contacts but lose the scripted sequence. On the other five, it is your choice.

### The five things that move
Odin arrives on day 2 instead of day 10. The Appraiser Board offer moves from day 8 to day 5. The Mentor’s single return visit moves from day 14 to day 12. Random market events start on day 1 instead of day 6, and the newspaper, The Bottomline Bulletin, is delivered from day 1 instead of day 8.
The day-1 events matter most: the early economy is where a skipped intro gives you a price spike to sell into before you have rent pressure. It also means you meet the consequences of a bad week sooner.

### The achievement you lose
First Steps is awarded when the Mentor says goodbye on day 14. Skip the intro and that visit never happens, so the achievement cannot be earned in that run. It is not a bug: the achievement is a record of the tutorial, and you opted out of the tutorial.
If you are chasing 21 of 21, do one guided run. If you are chasing an efficient start, skip it and accept one missing entry.

### Endless Mode is the other switch
Endless Mode sits on the difficulty screen as a separate option, not a fifth difficulty. It removes four storylines entirely — Georgio, Officer Lun, Eleanor and Cadet Serpico — which is why it is the cleanest mode for pure shopkeeping.
Use it when you want the economy without the story beats interrupting the queue. Do not use it on a first run if you want to see what the game is about.


## All 21 achievements, and what they teach you

URL: https://probablystolen.games/lore/achievements/
The achievement list is a disguised systems map: a wealth ceiling above 100,000, attractiveness above 1,000, a sub-50-day buyout, and an entire appraisal profession.

### Why the list matters
The count of 21 is official; the names and conditions below are a community transcription. Read together, they disclose systems the store page never mentions: estimated total wealth is a tracked stat with thresholds at 10,000 and 100,000, attractiveness can exceed 1,000, and a buyout before day 50 is an intended pace.
They also prove that the appraisal profession is scored rather than binary — An Eye for Value requires ten Perfect estimates — and that chemistry and hydroponics have grade systems of their own.

### Owning the store (5)
Keys to the Kingdom — the store becomes yours, outright or with the mortgage paid off. Clean Hands — own it without selling stolen or contraband goods in that run. From Nothing — own it on Rock Bottom. From Nothing, the Hard Way — the same on Thin Margins or Red Ink. Prodigious — own it with the day counter below 50.
Those five are the strategy curriculum in order: finish, finish cleanly, finish from nothing, finish from nothing on hard, finish fast. If you want a single goal for a run, pick one of them.

### Money, machines and production (8)
Authorized — buy the Business Permit. Comfortably Afloat — estimated wealth above 10,000 at day start. Swimming in Credits — above 100,000. Shiny — attractiveness of 1,000 or more. Industrious — ten machines at day start.
Say My Name — a Chem Finisher producing a Lab Pure product at 99 percent or better. Green Thumb — a Huge Nutrifruit harvest. Cranked to Eleven — modules in one machine totalling +250 Quality. The last three are the only places the game states its quality grades in public.

### Runs, story and luck (5) and the cumulative three
First Steps — the Mentor’s day-14 goodbye, impossible with Skip Intro. We Have Rats! — start as Rat Wrangler. Diplomatic — any faction at +200. Jackpot — a Scratcher Ticket paying 350 credits. Lower Levels Special — change a label with the Labeler.
Three are counted across runs: Snitches Get Riches (report 10 wanted criminals), Aug Hunter (shoot 10 Augs) and An Eye for Value (10 Perfect appraisal estimates). They are the only achievements that reward a habit rather than a single run, which makes them the honest long-term goals.

### What is missing
There is no achievement for a specific loss ending, no collectible or exploration achievement, and no difficulty completion except Rock Bottom on the hard modes. The set says the game has essentially no content tourism: everything is economic.


## Every market event, with its numbers

URL: https://probablystolen.games/lore/market-events/
Fifteen random events move prices, bring a specific customer and last one to four days. The full table, plus the roll odds and the cooldown rule.

### How events roll
The first random event can fire on day 6, or day 1 with Skip Intro. Up to three run at once, at most one new per morning, and the daily roll depends on how many are already active: 50 percent with none, 35 with one, 25 with two, zero with three.
Cooldown is duration plus three days, with two named exceptions — Mob Justice at 10 days and Oxymore Addiction at 5. Opposite events cancel: a new event moving a price the other way ends the one it opposes, and a re-roll of the same event extends its duration. All of this is community-sourced.

### The table
Effects compound with your stock and your reputation, so the useful reading is not “what is expensive” but “what do I already have on the shelf”. An event that raises Water by 50 percent is worth nothing if your case is full of cigarettes.

### How to use the table
The play is to buy the affected category before the event and sell into it, or to hold stock you already have instead of dumping it. Events that bring a customer type are also a queue hint: a Pharmacist walking in during a medical event is a buyer with a reason.
Two events are scheduler, not random: Meteor Shower is scripted on day 12 without Skip Intro, and Evidence Locker Break-In is day 7 only and brings a Thief. Treat those as appointments rather than luck.


## Who made Probably Stolen

URL: https://probablystolen.games/lore/who-made-it/
Bei Ning Pan started it solo, interned at The Coalition, Ubisoft Montreal and Eidos, and names Space Station 13 and “a bit of” Papers, Please as inspirations.

### The short version
Probably Stolen began as a solo project by Bei Ning Pan and now has a team of four artists and three audio developers around him — roughly eight people, not a studio of dozens. Before this, he interned at Microsoft Xbox Game Studio (The Coalition), Ubisoft Montreal and Eidos.
The game was built on top of a shelved project called Space Looter, described in the developer’s own post as a turn-based sci-fi space-station crawler, reworked into a shopkeeping sim after he came back from a trip.

### The inspirations, in his words
In the 3 August 2026 Steam post, the developer names his inspirations directly: Space Station 13 and “also a bit of” Papers, Please. That is a confirmed statement from the developer, not a journalist’s comparison — although PC Gamer made the same comparison independently in its demo impressions.
The distinction matters for how you read the game. Space Station 13 explains the station-as-system, the jobs and the emergent trouble; Papers, Please explains the counter, the document and the decision to report.

### One unresolved origin
A YouTube preview claims the predecessor project was called Deep Space Emporium and that it is still listed on Steam. The official post says Space Looter. The sequence Space Looter → Deep Space Emporium → Probably Stolen is plausible and unverified, so this page does not resolve it.
If you are citing the origin story, cite the official post and say “Space Looter”; mention the other name only as a claim you could not confirm.

### What this explains about the game
A solo origin explains the design priorities: systems that generate stories rather than scripted set pieces, a shop rather than a hero, and a first build that ships with Workshop support and a modding API on day one.
It also explains the patch rhythm. Launch-day hotfixes changed real prices within hours, and the roadmap promises free scenario updates, Expeditions and a story expansion that changes how a run can end.


## What other guides get wrong

URL: https://probablystolen.games/lore/what-guides-get-wrong/
Six claims that circulate widely and do not survive a check against build 1.0.0.2: the start count, the ending count, the rent rate, the buyout, the scanner and controller support.

### 1. “12 specializations”
The start screen has twelve rows. Nine are playable, three are locked and labelled Work In Progress, and two more exist in the files without a menu entry. If a page lists twelve playable starts, it counted the menu.

### 2. “15 endings”
Two independent transcriptions now give seventeen: two wins and fifteen losses. The two that go missing are Assassinated (Upper Levels at −100) and No Permit. Part of the confusion is structural: three endings share the title BOMBED and two share BUYOUT, so a naive title count reads as fourteen.

### 3. “Rent rises 4.5%”
Players measuring the Normal rent line report 200 → 210 → 220, which is five percent per week, and a stacked 420 bill after a missed week. The official statement is separate and simpler: rent rises after every rent day whether you paid or not.

### 4. “The buyout is not implemented”
That was true of the demo. The 1.0 build ships the buyout, a stats screen and two win endings. Any page still saying otherwise was written before 28 October and not revised.

### 5. “The Aug scanner is reliable”
It reports only AUG DETECTED or No Aug detected, costs 25 power and works once per customer. It is a second opinion. The cheapest test remains behavioural: Augs refuse every price negotiation.

### 6. “Controller support / Deck Verified”
There is no controller support flag and Deck status is Playable, not Verified. Deck play needs a community layout or the touchscreen.


## Languages

- English (en): https://probablystolen.games/
- 繁體中文（台灣） (zh-Hant-TW): https://probablystolen.games/zh-tw/
- 简体中文 (zh-Hans-CN): https://probablystolen.games/zh-cn/
- 繁體中文（香港） (zh-Hant-HK): https://probablystolen.games/zh-hk/
- Русский (ru): https://probablystolen.games/ru/