Scam With Your Friends news: playtest, videos and community

Official news from the developers' Discord

Since late September the developers have posted their news in the official Discord, not on Steam. The items below are posts by the developers themselves (Metater and JakeHub); posts by server staff are marked as such.

• October 13: server load test, all playtesters let in. In an @everyone post JakeHub wrote that they are "running a SERVER LOAD TEST" so the servers can handle Thursday's release: "We released ALL PLAYTESTERS", and everyone's AI usage limits for the playtest were reset. It is "ONLY for people who already signed up for the playtest"; they are "NOT accepting new playtesters". Players were told to update the game. Staff also posted "40k members!" the same day. See playtest.
• October 12: Early Access at 5 PM EST, and 500,000 wishlists. In an @everyone post Metater wrote "Get ready for EARLY ACCESS RELEASE ON THURSDAY (5PM EST)! We are ready!"; Thursday is October 15. The same post celebrated "0.5 MILLION WISHLISTS" and opened a #caller-personality-suggestions channel: players who already have the game can create callers and post a screenshot there, and the developers "might put your caller in the base game". Callers must be parody, and you must own the rights to the voice and art; see mods. Steam's store data points to 2 PM Eastern instead of 5 PM; see release date.
• October 12: Medal clipping. Metater: "We now have Medal auto clipping support!" Medal is an app that records game clips.
• October 11: Steam lists October 15, and the game is #1. Steam's store page switched from "October 2026" to October 15, 2026, the day the developers had named, and the game reached #1 in Steam's Popular Upcoming list, ahead of Total War: SHOGUN 2 - Complete Edition and Castlevania: Belmont's Curse. Metater posted "NUMBER 1 POPULAR UPCOMING!" and JakeHub followed with a long "YOOOO". Shortly after, Metater added "#3 wishlist activity!" without naming the chart. See release date.
• October 8 and 9: playtest branch updates and a key giveaway. Metater posted new updates to the playtest's "development" branch on October 8 and 9 (you need existing playtest access to use it). On October 8 the developers also promoted another free key giveaway on Mr. Curry's Kick stream, with the usual note that nobody needs to pay. See free playtest keys.
• October 7: the Roblox Edition is out. JakeHub announced "Scam with Your Friends is NOW on Roblox!": a family-friendly version built with a Roblox developer that you can play "completely FREE right now". The official game, then called "Scam With Your Friends! [Official]" and now "Scam With Your Friends!™ [OFFICIAL]", is by the Roblox group Jatater Worldwide; copycats with the same name have more players. See Roblox.
• October 7: release update, aiming for October 15. JakeHub wrote that Steam "still hasn't reviewed our game". The developers expected the review back by Friday, October 2; it had taken about 10 days, they have sent support tickets, and the build may need changes after the first review, which could cause more delay. Even if Steam approves it this week they want a few days of testing first. "We're hoping to release next Thursday", which is October 15, but that depends on Steam. The same post thanked players for 400,000 wishlists. See release date.
• October 6: more AI improvements for testers. Late on October 6 Metater posted "more improvements to the AI" on the playtest's development branch and asked for AI feedback in #playtest-dev-branch-feedback. See playtest.
• October 6 (staff): FAQ moves Early Access to October 15. Server staff changed the Discord FAQ from early access "around October 8th" to "around October 15th", a few hours before the developers' update.
• October 6: new playtest version. Late on October 5 Metater wrote that they were "redesigning some AI model stuff" and planned an update that night. Early on October 6 he posted "okay, now the new version is out", so a new playtest version is live. See AI callers.
• October 6 (staff): free-game DMs are a scam. A server staff member (not a developer) warned in #announcements not to trust anyone who DMs you about getting the game for free, and never to download anything from an untrustworthy source. Report such messages through #create-a-ticket or to the moderators. See download for the safe ways to get the game.
• October 4 and 5: playtest development branch. The developers opened a "development" Steam branch of the playtest with "massive changes". Its password is posted only in the Discord. Feedback goes through the in-game form or #playtest-dev-branch-feedback. See playtest. On October 5 Metater also said they are working on "a deal with an AI provider".
• October 1: AI outage. Metater wrote that the AI model "just went down partially" and that "This model is going away anyway in 20 days, so we have already been looking into replacements." See AI callers.
• September 29: straight to Early Access, $10, no demo. Metater announced "WE ARE PIVOTING TO EARLY ACCESS (NO DEMO)". Early Access will cost $10 USD "with Steam's price localization". Skipping the demo and Steam Next Fest avoids pushing the release back a month. Steam's review of the build had started, and the target was 2.5 to 4 weeks from September 29, roughly mid to late October, with no exact day. Early Access and 1.0 "will both have unlimited AI credits inside the base price of the game. There will be no microtransactions." The game had 230,000 wishlists. See release date and price.
• September 19 to 29: playtest waves. The first 1,000 signups (plus friend invites) and select content creators got in from September 19 to 23, the next 2,000 on September 27. On September 29 nearly 7,000 had access and the remaining 8,600 were to follow "in a week or so". Signups "are closed and won't reopen", and the playtest will close a few days before Early Access. See playtest waves.
• September 28: fake website warning. Metater warned that dev-jataterworldwide[.]com impersonates the developers and that its "Scam With Your Friends Dev.zip" is not theirs and reportedly contains malware. The only official site is jataterworldwide.com. See download.
• September 25 to October 7: free key giveaway streams. The developers endorsed playtest key giveaways on Mr. Curry's (MrCurryS6) Twitch and Kick streams, and said nobody needs to subscribe, gift subs, donate or pay. On September 26 they apologised because an earlier stream had tied keys to gifted subs and donations, which they had not approved. A senior moderator (staff) announced another Kick stream with more than 70 keys for October 7. See free playtest keys.

From staff, not the developers: milestone posts counted 4,000 Discord members on September 20 and 30,000 on October 5, and both staff and developers warned that people selling playtest keys are most likely scamming you.

What changed this week

• A launch time and 500,000 wishlists. On October 12 the developers announced Early Access for Thursday, October 15 at 5 PM EST and 0.5 million wishlists, up from 400,000 on October 7. Steam's store data points to 2 PM Eastern, three hours earlier. See release date.
• A countdown on Steam, but no news post. On October 14 (00:45 UTC) the store page said the game "plans to unlock in approximately 1 day and 17 hours". The developers' last Steam post is still the 100,000 wishlists announcement from September 23, and the playtest notice has not changed. All the news above came through Discord.
• The playtest is live. Steam counted 64 people playing the playtest at the same time on October 2, 61 on October 5, 43 on October 6, 41 on October 7, 52 on October 9, 31 on October 11, 82 on October 12, 48 early on October 13 and 433 that evening, the most in any of our checks, after the developers let in all signed-up playtesters for a server load test, and 248 at 00:45 UTC on October 14. The development branch, opened on October 4, got further updates on October 6, 8 and 9. The playtest closes a few days before the October 15 launch.
• A Roblox Edition, still outnumbered by copycats. The free official Roblox game, now called "Scam With Your Friends!™ [OFFICIAL]", had 3 players online and about 147,000 visits on October 14. The biggest copycat, renamed from "[🎃] Scam With Your Friends" to "[🎃] Scam Together", had about 1,600 online and 3.1 million visits and is still first in Roblox search. See how to find the official one.
• A different game with the same name on Xbox. An Xbox Store game called Scam With Your Friends, by Hidden Floor Games, came out on October 7. It is not the Steam game. See Xbox.
• The community is growing fast. The official Discord went from about 25,400 to about 40,100 members between October 2 and 14. The Steam forum went from about 530 to 1,321 topics, and the main invite thread from under 200 to 1,596 replies.
• #1 in wishlist growth. On October 6 GameDiscoverCo estimated it was the #1 trending unreleased Steam game by new wishlists for September 28 to October 5, ahead of Family Time and Find The Needle. Its October 13 issue put the game at #3 for October 5 to 12, with an estimated 120,000 new wishlists, behind Squadron 42 and Left! Left! LEFT!.
• On a weekly trending list, twice. On October 6 GameGrin's weekly list of trending Steam games put the game at #11, a new entry, with 6,207 new Steam followers in the week of September 28 to October 4. Its list for October 5 to 11 has it at #11 again, with 5,109 new followers.
• A launch day on Steam. Steam lists October 15, 2026 for Early Access. The $10 price comes from the developers; Steam does not show a price yet. The full release is still targeted for mid-December. See release date and price.

Most-watched YouTube videos

Most of what people have seen of the game comes from creators in the playtest. The earliest gameplay uploads appeared around September 19. Views as of October 14, 2026:

A lot of the reach is not in English. The most-watched video is ElMariana's Spanish session from October 8, at about 1.92 million views five days after upload. German creators Coachlim Gaming, Rohaze, HamedLoco Spielt and Gelgmire, Turkish creator ERAY and Arabic creator Mamkalo each passed 100,000 views too. Steam lists full audio in 23 languages, Spanish, German, Turkish and Arabic among them.

In English, the game reached the Vanoss crew: BasicallyIDoWrk (about 333,000 views) and Terroriser (about 242,000) both posted sessions on October 8 and 9, and WILDCAT's video from October 10 has about 407,000.

Shorts add more: a Short by HappySammyPlayz had about 258,000 views on October 11. The official trailer on JakeHub's channel has about 78,000, and the developers have not posted a new trailer. Ignore videos promising "Early Access for free" with a link in the description: that is a lure, not an offer.

One video with a similar name, "A Game Where You Scam Your Friends" by Joe Bart Games, is from April 2026 and is not about this game. Videos about "Scam Line" or "Shady Job Simulator" are about other games too. The developers' own YouTube channels have posted nothing new about it since the September trailer.

Most videos follow the same pattern: a group of friends on voice chat improvising scam calls with an AI caller who argues back, gets suspicious or hangs up. If you want to know how that works, see AI callers and how to play.

TikTok

On TikTok the game travels as short clips cut from those sessions. The hashtag #scamwithyourfriends had about 411 videos and 41.7 million views on October 14, 2026, up 6.7 million since October 11. Smaller tags: #scamwithfriends (about 614K views), #jakehub (about 236K) and #scamwithyourfriendsgame (about 230K).

The games industry newsletter GameDiscoverCo noted on September 29 that the game had "memed its way up" to #4 among trending unreleased Steam games by new wishlists for September 21 to 28, and on October 6 that it was up to #1 for September 28 to October 5, and on October 13 at #3 for October 5 to 12. GameGrin's weekly trending list had it at #11 on October 6 and again on October 12. Major gaming sites had not covered it as of October 14.

What players are talking about

Playtest invites

Almost every new thread on the Steam forum is someone asking for an invite. Some users offer money for one. Do not pay: invites are free, and a thread called "Re-invite - Developer" that asks for codes is not from the developers. How invites really work is on the playtest page.

Release date and price rumours

Players keep guessing a launch day and price, with numbers like "oct 28", $5 to $7 or $20. Most of the dates going around do have an origin. Apart from October 15, which Steam now lists, none of them is current:

• October 28 was the date Steam showed at the end of August, as seen in a Steam embed in the developers' August 31 Discord announcement.
• November 5 was Steam's date from September 8. Steam now lists October 15.
• October 8 was the planned demo date ("October 8th hopefully", September 25 and 26). The developers dropped the demo on September 29.
• September 30 shows on an automatically generated Kotaku game page that pulls its data from the IGDB database. No official source ever gave that date.
• The staff FAQ in the Discord still lists November 5 for the release and $9.99. On October 6 staff moved its Early Access line from "around October 8th" to "around October 15th", matching the date Steam now lists.

The price is no longer a rumour: the developers said in their official Discord on September 29 that Early Access costs $10 USD with Steam's regional pricing. The day is no longer a rumour either: Steam lists Thursday, October 15, 2026, and the developers announced 5 PM EST.

Does the game take my voice?

One of the most-asked questions. Developer JakeHub answered it on Steam: speech-to-text and the callers' voices run on your own PC, and only the caller's "brain", a language model on OpenRouter, runs in the cloud. Details on the AI callers page.

Performance and platforms

Playtest threads mention lag in lobbies and fans spinning up, and players keep asking for a Mac version. Metater told a Mac user in the Discord on October 4 that "we are considering mac support in the future", but Steam lists Windows only; see system requirements and platforms.

Criticism of the setting

The game is set in a scam call center in Kolkata, India. Since late September, posts on the Steam forum and in Indian subreddits have called the premise racist, and one post urged people to report the Steam page. Other players defend it as satire aimed at scammers. The developers had not responded publicly as of October 12, 2026. This site covers the game as fiction and does not give real-world advice.

Where to follow official news

• Official Discord: the #announcements channel is where the developers' news lands first, including playtest updates.
• Steam page: the playtest notice, the release date and occasional announcements.
• Jatater Worldwide on YouTube for trailers.

This page is updated when the facts change.