Play the Situation

Using Play the Situation

Play the Situation is a site of games set in real situations from the news, made for entertainment and for practising judgment. Use it in that spirit, and be decent to the people playing alongside you. By playing any of its games, you agree to these terms. If they are not for you, that is completely fine; just don't use the site.

Several games, one set of terms

Each game here is its own, with its own rules and its own way of being played. These terms cover all of them. A game's How to play page explains how that game works; it never takes anything away from what is written here.

Games open, change, pause and close. We may change, pause or retire any game, or any part of one, at any time. When a game is retired we aim to keep its home readable and the runs shared from it working, but we cannot promise that every game will be available for ever.

No account required

You don't need an account. A cookie on your device remembers you, so whoever is using that device can pick up your runs and your record. That means you are responsible for your own device and browser: if you share or clear them, your play on that device goes with them. If you have chosen a nickname, its recovery key, or a password and email you chose to add, is how you get your record back, and keeping those safe is yours to do.

Your record is status, not money

Your runs, endings, standings and profile, in every game, are status: a mark of judgment, not a currency. They carry no monetary value and cannot be bought, sold, traded or redeemed. There are no payments and no prizes, and nothing here can be cashed out.

The content

The games are drawn from real events, but every one of them is a dramatized decision game: not a report, not a prediction and not advice. A game's people are invented and its outcomes are simulations. The real calls a game shows are sourced, and the source, not the game, is the record of what happened.

Nothing on the site is financial, legal, medical or professional advice, and there is no single correct answer. Treat it as a way to think, not as guidance for a real decision in your life.

Acceptable use

Keep it fair. Please don't abuse other players, scrape or copy the games, cheat, automate play, or try to break the experience for anyone else. That goes for the names you choose and anything you write on the site as much as for how you play. We want a good room for everyone, so we may remove a nickname, content or access if someone is being abusive or gaming the system.

Provided as is

We work hard on the games, but we offer them “as is”, without warranties of any kind. We can't promise they will always be available, error-free or perfectly accurate, and we aren't responsible for how you use them. Enjoy them; just don't rely on them for anything that really matters.

Changes

The site will keep evolving, and these terms may change with it. When they do, we'll update the date at the top of this page. If you keep playing after a change, that means you accept the updated terms.