Scam With Your Friends Preview: Fraud Has KPIs Now
Scam With Your Friends is interesting for one very simple reason: you actually have to scam people.
You work in a criminal call centre, speak to fictional AI-controlled victims in real time, convince them to cooperate, remotely access their computers and extract whatever the job requires. The money goes towards a daily quota because apparently organised fraud also reaches the point where somebody invents KPIs.
And I keep coming back to the talking.
Crime games have given us lockpicking, hacking, burglary, drugs, car theft, money laundering and enough automatic weapons to equip Belgium for a particularly tense Tuesday. But manipulation itself is usually handled by a dialogue option.
Press A to lie.
Press B to threaten.
Press C because your Charisma stat is 8 and apparently this means another human being has temporarily lost access to judgement.
Scam With Your Friends seems to be asking what happens if the conversation becomes the actual mechanic.
If Scam With Your Friends has you reconsidering fraud as a viable career path, Best Crime Games has considerably more terrible life choices waiting for you. Some even come with guns instead of performance reviews.
You don't select the lie, you have to sell it
The callers react dynamically to what you're saying and doing. So instead of choosing the correct sentence from a menu, you need to keep the fictional victim cooperating.
That changes the whole thing.
You might know what you want them to do. That doesn't mean they're going to fucking do it.
You need access to their computer, so now you have to create a reason they should give a complete stranger remote access to their computer. Which sounds ridiculous until you remember that this happens successfully to real people every single day.
Suddenly the crime isn't happening after the conversation.
The conversation is the crime.
I find that much more interesting than another hacking minigame where you rotate some glowing pipes until Cybersecurity collapses and the Pentagon mails you a certificate.
Social engineering is one of the most important tools in actual fraud, but games rarely touch it because it's messy. People are unpredictable. They ask questions. They become suspicious. They misunderstand instructions. They can decide halfway through that Kevin from Microsoft sounds suspiciously Belgian.
That mess might be exactly what makes this work.
If the AI can actually react well enough, every victim becomes a small problem to solve. Not because their computer has a higher Security Level, but because the person sitting behind it has to believe whatever absolute bollocks you're feeding them.
That's proper criminal gameplay.
Unfortunately, crime also has middle management
Then there's the daily quota.
I love this.
You've gone into organised fraud and somehow still ended up having your performance reviewed.
Somewhere above you sits a man looking at a spreadsheet wondering why Cubicle Four only stole €3,200 today when the quarterly target clearly says €4,000.
Can we circle back on your grandmother conversion rate?
The office has scams to unlock, money to earn and increasingly chaotic shifts to survive. Scambaiters can attack your computer. Viruses can become a problem. Police raids can happen. Eventually air strikes enter the situation.
Air strikes.
You start the morning pretending somebody has an expired antivirus subscription and by teatime NATO appears to have opened a file.
There must be a point during the escalation where the authorities realise they've traced a fraudulent bank transfer to an office building and somebody says, "Should we send detectives?"
And another man quietly wheels a cruise missile into the meeting.
Obviously the game is leaning hard into comedy, but underneath that stupidity there could be a surprisingly good system.
A criminal workplace creates pressure.
You need money. Management expects results. Victims aren't guaranteed to cooperate. Other people can actively interfere with you. Your own computer can become compromised. Police can disrupt the operation.
You're committing crimes, but you're also trying to keep the business functioning.
That combination interests me far more than simply having a funny office full of scammers.
The interesting bit here is getting to be the bastard yourself. Head into Playable Villains for more games where evil isn't somebody else's cutscene problem.
This is the bit crime games normally teleport past
Most crime games are very good at the exciting part.
Steal car.
Deliver car.
Money.
What happened between stealing it and converting a stolen Mercedes into legitimate currency?
Apparently nothing.
There is presumably a gigantic criminal logistics industry staffed entirely by men called Barry who exist just outside the playable area.
You steal twelve televisions and Barry buys them.
You steal diamonds and Barry buys them.
You steal a military helicopter and Barry looks at it for perhaps three seconds before saying, "Yeah, mate, I know a guy."
Real criminal activity has all the awkward bits games usually remove. Finding a buyer. Identifying a target. Establishing trust. Getting information. Moving goods. Lying. Waiting. Negotiating. Discovering your brilliant criminal plan now depends entirely on Dave answering WhatsApp.
Scam With Your Friends takes one of those neglected parts and makes it the centre of the game.
You want access to someone's computer?
Fine.
Convince them.
That sounds almost embarrassingly obvious, but very few games bother.
Remote access then becomes much more interesting because the hacking isn't really the impressive bit. The impressive bit is that you persuaded another person to open the door for you.
Your most important weapon may end up being sounding reassuring.
That's wonderful.
Of course, AI could also completely ruin this
There is a fairly enormous problem lurking underneath all of this.
What happens when players figure the AI out?
Because if there are three sentences that reliably convince everybody to cooperate, the entire criminal fantasy collapses faster than a pyramid scheme run by somebody whose LinkedIn bio says "visionary."
Dynamic conversations are exciting precisely because they're unpredictable.
If they stop being unpredictable, you're basically entering cheat codes through a microphone.
And even if the conversations work brilliantly, the scams themselves need enough variety. Talking somebody into giving you remote access could be hilarious the first few times. If every job eventually becomes another variation of "hello madam, kindly install this software," you're going to feel less like a criminal mastermind and more like you've accidentally accepted a customer-support job with substantially worse pension benefits.
We also don't know enough yet about progression, balance, long-term repetition, technical reliability or how entertaining the whole thing is alone.
Solo play exists, but this premise feels built for co-op.
Part of the fun is surely going to be hearing your friend attempt a perfectly sensible scam before panicking and informing an elderly fictional woman that he works for "Windows Bank Police."
Alone, perhaps it still works.
Perhaps it feels like an eight-hour shift.
That's something the game still has to prove.
But 100,000 people are already curious
The developers announced more than 100,000 Steam wishlists in September, after announcing 10,000 earlier that same month. More than 12,000 people also applied for the closed playtest before access had to be limited.
So this has gone well beyond "funny Steam game somebody found at 2 AM."
People have noticed it.
And I can see why.
The premise is instantly understandable, but underneath the comedy there is an actual criminal-system idea here that I haven't seen explored properly very often.
You manipulate people.
You gain access.
You steal.
You meet your quota.
You try not to have the office raided, infected, counter-scammed or apparently vaporised by military aviation.
I still have no idea whether Scam With Your Friends will remain funny after the tenth call, or whether its AI can survive thousands of players immediately attempting to find the dumbest possible sentence that still works.
But the important bit is already there.
The scam is real gameplay.
Now I want to know whether being good at crime means learning how to sound like someone your nan would trust with her laptop.
If CRIMENET investigating fictional scam centres, criminal bureaucracy and weaponised customer service is your particular brand of nonsense, you can help keep the lights on through Ko-fi. We promise not to phone your grandmother.
FAQ
What is Scam With Your Friends?
It’s a co-op crime game where you work in a scam call centre, talk to fictional AI-controlled victims, remotely access their computers and complete scams for money.
Can you play Scam With Your Friends solo?
Yes. The game supports solo play as well as online co-op and public lobbies.
Does Scam With Your Friends actually use AI?
Yes. The fictional callers use AI to react dynamically to what players say and do during conversations.
Is there a Scam With Your Friends release date?
The game is currently planned for Steam Early Access, but the exact launch date is not yet reliable enough to treat as confirmed.
Is Scam With Your Friends a real crime game?
Very much so. Scamming, deception, remote computer access and stealing money are core gameplay systems rather than background flavour.
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