A Strategy Guide and Tutorial to Stolen, Written By Someone Who Mostly Isn’t Sure What He’s Doing

I chanced across an article about the game at the end of the day on Friday. And as luck would have it, I snagged a code a few hours later (you need one to get access to the game) and started exploring.

It’s pretty addictive, and I’ve already spent a lot of time this weekend with it. I’m not sure I quite grok everything that’s going on, but here’s what I think I’ve figured out to date. If I’ve missed something or gotten something incorrect – feel free to leave a comment!

Basic Game Play

The game revolves around everyone’s Twitter account (you need one to play), and involves buying and selling other people (er, accounts). Each person is assigned a price, which fluctuates depending on activity. The more people who buy/sell, the higher the price goes up. Over time, if no activity occurs, the price eventually drops.

If you click the check mark to buy, here’s what happens:

– You “buy” the user at the current price.
– That money is taken out of your account (shown at the top left).
– The user is added to your collection.
– The price of the user jumps up.
– The price of the user slowly begins to drop at a steady rate.

Now, if another player decides to “buy” this user from you, they will have effectively “stolen” the person from you (hence the app’s name). When this happens, it triggers a few things:

– The user is removed from your collection.
– The current price of the user is added back to your account.

One other thing to note: outside of the buyer and seller, each time a user is purchased, that user gets a small bit of profit.

So let’s run through a hypothetical. Let’s say you buy me (I’m @avoision, by the way). My current price is around §10,000.

On purchase, I would be added to your collection and my cost would jump up a little to, say, §12,000. And immediately start decreasing in value at the rate of like §2 per second, eventually slowing down to something like §1 per five seconds.

If someone came along and immediately “stole” me from you, my price would jump up to, say, §14,000. You would receive an approximate profit of around §500 as a result.

But let’s say no one does anything at all. Well, I’d just sit in your collection for a while and slowly lose value. There’s even a chance that my value would fall below your original purchase price.

If someone would then come alone and “stole” me from you then, the same process would happen… but you’d effectively be taking a loss as a result.

You can interact with the app in a few different ways. You can try to accrue and maintain people in your collection that you like (friends, celebrities, organizations). Or you can try to amass a lot of money in buying and selling.

One last thing I’ll mention: for every person in your collection, you will on occasion receive some profit just by owning them. It’s not a lot, and varies based on each person’s overall value. But it does provide some benefit, for having (and maintaining) high value people in your collection.

What’s been really addictive to me has been the act of going on a buying/selling spree – trying to pull off a bit of profit in a short flurry. Below, I list out one or two rough approaches for this.

Beginner’s Buys

At the bottom of the app, there are several tabs that let you navigate to different areas. The “New” tab shows you all new users to the app which, for the most part, means that the cost to “buy” these users is typically very low. We’re talking about costs in the §1,250 – §4,000 range.

My recommendation would be to click on the price of a user, and then watch what happens. On clicking, a small ribbon will come across the screen showing the current price, and also ask if you want to buy. Example:

If you do nothing and wait, you may see the price increase. If you’re lucky, you’ll see the price consistently increase.

If you’re new to buying, I’d suggest buying when the price hits around §10,000. If there’s been a steady increase in price, that means other users are buying this account, and driving the price up. And it also means that someone else will very likely be on your heels, and “steal” this person from you – thereby giving you a small profit as a result.

Here’s the catch though: as more people are trying to buy, the harder it is to get your transaction in. One minute you’re clicking “buy” and the price is §20,000 and in a blink, the price is §30,000 and rising.

Warning #1: Sometimes, you have to keep pressing the “buy” button repeatedly to get through. But if you’re not paying attention, you could be trying to buy someone at §20,000 and wind up buying them at §50,000.

Warning #2: It’s great if you buy and then someone immediately steals the account from you, as there’s a satisfying feeling that you’ve made a tidy little profit. But what you want to avoid is possibly being the last person to buy.

I’ve been in situations where I was jumping in a buying spree on an account that started at §1,250, and jumped to well over §150,000. Trouble was, I was the guy holding onto that account at the end. I overpaid at §150,000 and suddenly… there was no one else around who wanted to buy from me. So I was stuck with an overpriced account. And slowly lost money.

Oops.

As a general rule – for buying sprees that take place, they start to top out at the §100,000 level. If a user’s price is steadily rising, I think it’s safe to keep buying until §75,000 or so. At that point, you need to be a little more cautious (or else you’ll end up owning an account you may not care for).

Advanced Buys

Once you’re feeling more comfortable… at the bottom of the app, you can navigate over to the “Stolen” tab. This just lists recent activity but it’s no guarantee that there are a lot of people buying any one account (it could just be one person).

If you see a price increase here, don’t jump in too quickly. Unlike the activity in the “New” area, I’ve had less luck here with unknown accounts. What I prefer doing is scanning the “Stolen” tab looking for verified accounts (the one with the light blue seal and white checkmark).

It doesn’t work all the time, but usually if you see a verified account start to rise in price – it will very likely go much higher, in the §150,000+ range. If it’s a name you recognize, chances are it could even go into the §200,000+ range.

Here’s a quick before/after on a verified account that quickly increased in price.

As a final chart, here are some profits I made during several buying sprees. As you may have guessed, the higher the price… the higher the profit you get.

It’s funny that a game that deals with fake currency and a fake stock market could garner so much interest. But I’ve lost a great deal of time this weekend, just putzing around trying to make money. I’m sure there’s a stock market equivalent to this strategy (is it called pumping and dumping?), but that seems to be the excitement I’ve gotten from the game.

More than anything else it feels like gambling in a way. If I buy someone at a high price, the rush isn’t in the purchase. It’s in the relief I feel when someone else comes along, buying that person away from me (simultaneously giving me a profit, and absolving my previous action). It is this profit/absolution that keeps me coming back for another buy, another round.

And now if you’ll excuse me… I’ve spent so much time playing this fake stock market, I’ve grossly neglected my fake cats, and need to go buy them some fake food.

Related:
Luckiest Penny Ever
Stolen Luck: Bank Where I Found a Lucky Penny Gets Robbed, Less Than 24 Hours Later
Methuselah Trusts, Compound Interest, and the Silent Legacy of Jonathan Holdeen