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No. 648: Words With Friends You Can't Trust

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Words With Friends You Can't Trust

First | Previous | 2017-11-13 | Next | Latest

Permanent URL: https://mezzacotta.net/dinosaur/?comic=648

Strip by: David Morgan-Mar

T-Rex: Now in Words With Friends you can buy "coins" with real money and use them
T-Rex: TO CHEAT.
{beat}
Utahraptor: And?
{beat}
T-Rex: What. More. Needs. To. Be. Said?

The author writes:

Seriously.

For those who don't know, Words With Friends is a Scrabble clone word game which you can play online with, allegedly, friends.

As in Scrabble, you take turns to play letter tiles onto a board, forming words crossword-style, with the aim of scoring the most points. As in Scrabble, you can choose to forfeit a turn to swap any number of your letter tiles with the unused tile pool, if you have a poor selection of letters.

Except in the new version of Words With Friends, you now get virtual "coins" as you play, and you can spend those coins on various enhancements, such as custom coloured frames around your player avatar, ... and the ability to swap your tiles without forfeiting your turn. And what's more, you can buy the virtual "coins" with real world money.

This is exactly like if, in Scrabble, you could send money to Hasbro/Mattel, and swap your tiles without missing your turn.

In other words, it's exactly like playing a board game where you can send money to the game manufacturer to let you cheat.

Without your opponent knowing - because we tested it and the "pay coins and swap tiles without passing your turn" feature happens without any notification given to your opponent that it happened.