The official feature list for Scam With Your Friends is unusually specific about disasters. Feature eight reads, in full: "Survive computer viruses, police raids, air strikes, and other workplace disasters". Hazards are not a side system in this game; they are one of the four official pillars of the loop.
The three named hazards
- Computer viruses. These are planted by scambaiters, the people who make a hobby of wasting scammers' time. The developer's own copy names them as the opposing force of the game. Note the wording, because it trips people up: scambaiters are the people, viruses are what they plant. Your machines get infected, and infected machines need dealing with before the quota slips.
- Police raids. Officers arrive on the floor while calls are still running. Community footage shows the raid interrupting everyone at once rather than one desk, which is what makes hazards a team problem in co-op.
- Air strikes. The most extreme entry on the official list, and the reason "other workplace disasters" reads as an understatement.
What community footage adds
Playtest recordings are the only source for how hazards behave in practice, so everything in this section is labelled community-sourced:
- Hazards appear to land on a timer during the shift rather than being triggered by one player's mistake.
- An office-wide event hits every desk, so the recovery is a group effort.
- The store's in-game desktop shows dedicated apps for several disaster types, which suggests the hazard list is larger than the three official examples.
How hazards fit the loop
A shift runs on two clocks at once: the countdown toward the end-of-day review, and whatever the office throws at you. Handling a hazard costs call time, and call time is quota. That tension is the actual difficulty of the game, and it is why the official site gives hazards their own section title: "Your desktop, their disaster".
Where the hazard details will be finalized
The developer has not published a hazard list beyond the official examples, and the Early Access release is the point where that usually gets documented properly. The mods system is also worth watching here: custom personalities are already a base feature, and hazard behaviour is exactly the kind of system a moddable game tends to open up.