Beginner's guide

How to Play

Buy Your Friends is a social tycoon game. Public X profiles become collectible "friends" on a shared market. You buy them with points, put them to work, and grow a business empire while other players try to buy them out from under you. The whole loop fits in three steps: buy friends, seat them to earn, and snipe pricier friends to climb.

1. Buy friends on the Market

Open the Market to browse friends. Each friend has a level and an asking price. A friend nobody owns costs their level's price to claim. A friend another player owns can be sniped at the current market price, and each purchase pushes that friend's price up. Start with cheap friends so you can fill seats quickly.

2. Seat them in Positions to earn

Your board is made of Positions, such as Reply Guys, Quote Tweeters, Growth Hackers, Algorithm Gurus, Engagement Farmers and Ragebaiters. Every seated friend pays points on the game timer, every few seconds, while you play. Upgrade a position with points to raise what it pays and unlock more seats. An empty seat earns nothing, so keep your board full.

Bigger positions unlock as you grow. Creator Revenue, Subscribers and Affiliate Marketers pay LLC cash on top of points, and you upgrade them with LLC cash instead of points.

3. Snipe and climb

The market is live. When you can afford it, buy pricier friends off other players. When someone snipes one of yours, you receive 85% of the price, and the snipe bell shows who did it. Good players keep cash moving: sell low earners to rivals, reinvest, and trade up.

Hiring and your LLC

Friends level up as they change hands. At level 29 a friend can no longer be sniped. Instead you hire them for their asking price. A hired friend becomes an employee with a badge carrying their photo, then returns to the market as a contract employee at level 1. The friend's previous owner receives 25% of the hire price.

Your first hire founds your LLC. Name it and pick a logo. Every hire permanently raises your point pay, and employees also boost LLC cash, a second currency for late-game positions and upgrades.

Promotions

Hire a friend you already have a badge for and you promote them instead: Bronze, Silver, Gold, then Diamond. Promotions cost the hire price plus LLC cash, and each tier adds more point pay and LLC cash.

Major Restructuring

The prestige system. Spend LLC cash to start over: points, positions and seats reset, and your friends return to the market. Your badges, bots and cosmetics stay, and each restructuring doubles your LLC cash for good. The first one costs $10M of LLC cash, and each one after costs ten times more.

Events, bots and frames

Limited-time events run on their own board. During the Halloween event, the Cursed Market, everyone started fresh with Treats, and final net worth decided who earned Gold, Silver or Bronze avatar frames. Bots in your Storage boost particular positions or your LLC cash, and avatar frames show off what you've achieved next to your name.

The Great Feast (Thanksgiving event)

From November 1 to December 1 the Great Feast runs alongside the main game, and it's co-op. Everyone starts with 30 Pie and every friend starts at 5. Any number of players can hire the same friend: each first hire levels that friend up for everyone who has them, and the next hire costs double. A friend's first hire rolls their team for good (Turkey, Pilgrim or Harvest), and kitchen stations pay more for the right teams, up to a Full Plate at the Big Table. Friends earn a 10% cut of everything they cook in every kitchen. The first five different people to hire a friend are Founding Fans and get +20% from them, and two players who name each other as Plus-Ones both cook +25%. Everyone who joins gets the Turkey Day Bot: +10% LLC cash in the main game, for good.

The Feast Pot

Every 8 hours (7 AM, 3 PM and 11 PM Central) 20% of every kitchen's Pie goes into the Feast Pot. Each round has one mini game, and you get one try at it, whenever you like during the round. The top five scores split the pot: 40%, 25%, 15%, 12% and 8%, counted as Pie cooked. The game server replays your moves to score you, so scores can't be faked. The games rotate:

• Angry Turkeys: drag back the slingshot and fling turkeys at the pilgrims' huts and hay towers. Clear a level to go on to a harder one and keep your score.
• Turkey Hunt: tap the turkeys as they fly over the field. Ten turkeys, fifteen shells.
• Plate Stack: stack the plates as they swing faster, for as long as you can.
• Flappy Turkey: tap to flap through the corn stalks.
• Feast Crush Saga: match three in 20 moves. Four in a row makes a striped tile, a square a gravy bomb, an L or T a cross, five a Pie bomb. Swap two specials together for a combo.

Kitchen Trials

Practice any of the five games for free, as often as you like. Each game has four milestone scores, and the first time you reach one you go up a level as a friend, so you cook more in every kitchen you're in. A top five Feast Pot finish is +1 level too. It's the fastest way for a new player to catch up.

Strategy tips

• Fill every seat before upgrading. An empty seat is wasted income.
• Upgrade the positions with the most seated friends first.
• Treat getting sniped as profit. Reinvest it immediately.
• Watch friends approaching level 29. They're your path to hires and permanent multipliers.
• Save LLC cash for promotions and your first restructuring. Both pay off for good.
• Check the Updates page and the in-game News tab for new events and balance changes.

Frequently asked questions

See it without signing in: view-only main game and the Halloween event preview and the Great Feast preview.