How to Play Shady Job With Friends

Shady Job is a crew game that still expects each friend to bring a PC. Steam lists 1–4 player online co-op, Steam Achievements, and Family Sharing. Steam does not list local split-screen. If your plan is one television, four controllers, and a single Steam account, that plan is not on the store page. Everyone who clocks in needs their own machine, their own client, and a way to talk.

The Steam launch is September 10, 2026. Playtests ended August 31, 2026. This page is the friend-facing setup: party size, what “online” actually means, playtest-era invite history versus launch, voice, roles, and why the whole squad should wishlist the same day. Mechanic depth still lives on co-op, body bag, and Getting Started. Do not treat this article as a second copy of those guides.

Four people, four Steam sessions

One player can start. The 1–4 range is not marketing fluff. Solo is allowed and is also the hardest way to keep a struggling bag, a collapsing bridge, and a plunger rescue in the same pair of hands.

Two is the smallest crew that can split bag and path. One friend owns Punchy Bag. The other owns blocks, cranes, slot items, and the Plunger Gun. Swap only on a stable floor.

Three adds a dedicated lookout. That person Shoots, Pulls, and Drops to keep cargo and people on the structure. They do not decorate the skyline.

Four is the cap. The fourth is a floater: extra props from the items catalog, extra eyes on ice and electric, extra hands if two people go over at once. Four friends grabbing the bag is not a party game. It is how you teach Punchy Bag to hate the voice channel.

There is no listed split-screen, local co-op, or shared-screen couch mode. A friend on the sofa still joins online. Family Sharing is a Steam feature on the store, not a second copy hiding in video options. Confirm the live party UI in-game. This wiki will not invent a host button, a listen-server toggle, or a couch-split setting.

Hardware still matters. A friend on a toaster will not “be fine because it is cartoon.” Send them system requirements before you promise a four-stack. Price is not listed; do not budget a guessed number for the group.

Wishlist the same day

If you want to play together on September 10, 2026, every friend should wishlist Shady Job on Steam (app 4190710) now. Same-day wishlist is how four people get the same unlock ping instead of three people waiting on someone who never opened the store.

• Wishlist does not buy the game. It is a reminder.
• Unlock timing is timezone-sensitive. “September 10” is the store’s planned date, not a guaranteed local midnight in every country. Watch the store clock and @GAZE_IN_GAMES. Official URLs sit on links.
• Playtests are closed. There is no extra weekend wave listed between now and the 10th. If a friend never got a test invite, they are not behind on a secret beta. They are in the same boat as most of the waitlist.
• Use the launch checklist so drivers, binds, and voice are not the first argument after unlock.

Calendar detail, including what is still blank on the store, lives on the release date page.

Playtest invites were playtest-era rules

This is the sentence crews get wrong in group chat.

During the tests, access was random Steam invites, not a first-come queue you could brute force. If you got in, you could invite up to three friends who had been on your friends list 30+ days (Steam policy). A survey sat in the menu after playing. Wave 1 started July 24, 2026. Playtest 1.3 / Wave 4 on August 14 added LEVEL 2. The program ended August 31, 2026. Full timeline is on the playtest recap.

Those rules were for the playtest. They are not a promise of the launch invite screen.

• Do not tell a new friend they are locked out of September 10, 2026 because they have only been on your list for a week.
• Do not tell them they are guaranteed a plus-three either.
• Do not paste a playtest key shop in the Discord. Invites came through Steam then, and the test is over now.

Confirm the live party flow in-game. If Steam news later describes a launch invite rule, it will land on patch notes with a source. Until that post exists, treat the 30-day plus-three as history, not as day-one policy.

Voice, language, and callouts

Steam lists in-game chat and online interactivity. That is not a full voice-design document. Bring a voice channel anyway. Punchy Bag does not wait for typed sentences.

Agree on four calls before the first pickup (the longer version is on co-op):

• Bag — who is touching Punchy Bag.
• Path — who may place or break structure.
• Line — who has a plunger on cargo, wall, or a falling friend.
• Down — someone left the floor. Rescue first if a plunger can see them.

Add ice, electric, fan, and Floor 13 when those appear. HUD words (green bar, slots 1 and 2, Shoot / Pull / Release / Drop) are on controls. Do not invent keybinds to sound prepared.

If the squad does not share a first language, pick one call set and stick to it. Steam lists 15 interface languages; the first shown are English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish (Spain). This wiki itself is English, French, German, and Spanish. Interface versus audio detail is on languages. A mixed-language crew still needs the same four words, spoken, not four different HUD translations shouted at once.

Roles before ready-up

Friends who skip the seating chart will all grab the bag. Lock jobs on the squad planner and the roles page, then keep them for a full loop.

• Carrier — two hands on Punchy Bag, no heroic yeets. The bag struggles, escapes, breaks structures, pushes people off ledges, and gets meaner if you handle it roughly.
• Builder — blocks, cranes, moving platforms, wall and window breaks. One mistake can destroy the entire structure.
• Plunger — climb lines, bag yanks, fall recovery.
• Floater — sandwich and fan if those slots are in your HUD, toilet and barrel ramps, second rescue, hazard veto.

A duo merges plunger, build, and float. A solo is all four jobs and will drop something. That is expected. Default tactics — path-first, gentle carry, walk the bag — are ranked on strategy tiers.

What “playing with friends” is not

It is not a couch split-screen night on one PC. It is not a promise that launch uses the playtest 30-day invite rule. It is not four people in one chair taking turns on Punchy Bag. It is four Steam sessions, one unfinished tower, and a cargo that will shove the loudest friend off a ledge if you treat the session like a clip farm.

Read co-op for fall recovery. Read hazards if ice or electric is the thing you keep wiping on. Read items if the argument is about who holds the fan. Then close the wiki, open four clients, and clock in on the same day you all wishlisted.