QA and Support

A large number of employees from ZeniMax Studios are staging a strike today due to dissatisfaction with the company's policy on remote work and the outsourcing of quality assurance tasks.

Nintendo has announced that its next-generation console, which will succeed the Switch, will feature backward compatibility. Additionally, Nintendo Online services will transition to the upcoming console.

Following the departure of CEO and co-founder Andy Robson, Kudos QA has introduced a new leadership team

The Minister of State for Culture and the Media in Germany is calling on local developers to present their "brilliant game ideas" and seek financial support through the Press Start: Games Startup Grant fund.

Microsoft is said to be considering an expansion of its cloud streaming service, allowing players to access owned titles from their Xbox game libraries.

Support for PSVR in Minecraft will conclude starting March of the upcoming year

We continue to publish the results of the salary survey, conducted by us from April to May 2023, chapter by chapter. This current publication focuses on the income levels of Russian-speaking QA specialists

We continue to publish transcripts of presentations from the "Gaming Industry" conference. Next up is a talk by Alena Karaseva, head of the testing department at GostTeam. She discussed the most common issues encountered during the testing of gaming products

Toadman Interactive, a studio known for both original and work-for-hire projects, has revealed plans to shut down its offices in Stockholm, Visby, and Oslo. Additionally, some employees at the Immortal Unchained developer's Berlin location may face layoffs. The studio explained in a LinkedIn statement, "Like many other game companies, we have gone through a tough period over the last 12 months, and, unfortunately, that means that we are shutting down our offices in Stockholm, Visby, and Oslo, as well as having some redundancies in our Berlin studio"

Tencent, a leader in the global gaming industry, is enhancing its support for fledgling developers via its Venture Lab program. This division aids nascent studios in launching their inaugural game by offering investment, publishing and marketing assistance, consulting services, access to technology, as well as business planning and budgeting guidance. Juno Shin, with a 12-year background in business development and investment at Tencent, heads the initiative. Shin has assembled a group of industry specialists, with approximately 20 members currently engaged with Venture Lab, to broaden the range of services offered.

The new version of the open-source engine Godot has been released. Let’s take a look at some of the hundreds of changes and key features.

Sony is apparently working on a major overhaul of the PS Store’s review system, testing a feature familiar to Steam users.

Hybe Interactive Media has secured $80 million through a strategic investment to broaden its gaming publishing efforts. Hybe, the South Korean entertainment powerhouse behind the immensely popular boy band BTS, also manages multiple music labels across different regions. Hybe IM, the entity's video games division, was established in April 2022. The $80 million funding round was spearheaded by Makers Fund, with IMM Investment and Hybe also participating. The proceeds will be directed towards enhancing both its publishing and development operations

Outersloth has been a "really bad open secret" since 2022, according to Innersloth's communications director Victoria Tran. She shared this insight during a discussion about the new indie fund from Among Us creator Innersloth. Launched in June, the fund is designed to support small studios, with beneficiaries already including Outerloop Games, Strange Scaffold, and Visai Games. The first indication of Outersloth came when the venture signed its inaugural title, Mars First Logistics, from Australian studio Shape Shop

During the recent BAFTA Games Mental Health Summit, a group of actors shared their insights on enhancing mental health support in the industry. This panel, coordinated by performance capture and voice director Kate Saxon, included well-known figures such as Doug Cockle (The Witcher), Alix Wilton Regan (Assassin's Creed Origins), Jessica Hayles (Dead Island 2), and Robert Gilbert (Ghost Recon Breakpoint). The conversation centered around creating secure workspaces, providing support for diverse acting methodologies, and ensuring that actors are involved throughout the development process—from auditions to the final release of the game

NCSoft has announced a major business restructuring. The Lineage maker will split into two entities, NC QA Company and NC IDS Company.

Indie studio Believer Entertainment has decided to share its tool, Friendshipper, with other developers. They've released the project source code to the public.

Electronic Arts (EA) continues to cut staff. Insider Tom Henderson found out that in a few weeks more than 40 testers from the UK who worked on Apex Legends will leave the company.

Google is expanding its Google Play Games service by adding several important features. One of them is support for games built specifically for PC.

Paradox Interactive and Harebrained Schemes, the studio behind Shadowrun and BattleTech, have decided to part ways. This comes just days after the new turn-based tactics The Lamplighters League proved to be a commercial flop.

More than 8 thousand developers have applied to participate in the beta test of the Russian Nau Engine. It was possible to achieve such a figure in three months: the collection of applications was opened in June.

Publisher 505 Games has entered into an agreement with Ghostrunner 2 developer One More Level. The terms imply that the studio is committed to actively supporting the game for a year after its global launch.

The UK government has announced an additional funding of £77 million to accelerate the growth of the country’s creative sectors. This also applies to the video game industry, where developers and emerging studios will be able to receive help at early stages.

Fallout co-creator Tim Cain has detailed the process of writing design documents and how to avoid situations where people are making different games despite working on the same team. Here are some professional tips from one of the most recognized RPG developers.

VK Group has announced the start of accepting applications for testing a domestic game engine. She also revealed the name of the engine — Nau Engine.

Steam has announced major changes to traffic data reporting. The platform will no longer support Google Analytics, instead giving developers more first-party tools.

Google has applied for a patent for a technology that allows you to test games using artificial intelligence. The corporation expects that it will significantly accelerate work on games.

MMO Palia about life in the village has not yet been released, but it has already attracted hundreds of thousands of users. The developers from Singularity 6 said that to date, 600 thousand people have applied to participate in testing the game.

Electronic Arts has conducted a new round of mass layoffs. The entire testing team at the Baton Rouge, Louisiana office that worked on Apex Legends has reportedly been disbanded. And none of the QA workers knew about it in advance.

Appodeal has prepared a detailed tutorial on split testing of monetization on its platform.

Former Bioware executive producer Mark Darrah has tried to explain what Alpha means in game development, using Dragon Age: Dreadwolf as an example. He listed the distinctive features of this stage of production, also saying how much time usually passes between Alpha and launch.

The studio was founded by industry veteran Joel Benton, who previously worked at Codemasters, Just Add Water and The Aon Agency.

VK reports that its streaming platform has interested such streamers as Ilya Maddison, Danya Craster and Olyashaa.

CD Projekt’s QA partner Quantic Lab has responded to allegations that it misled the Polish developer to keep an outsourcing contract for Cyberpunk 2077. The Romanian company noted that this report lacked understanding of the whole game testing process.

Over the weekend, the story spread that Cyberpunk 2077 came out raw due to an unscrupulous QA contractor, Quantic Labs. They say that she did a bad job with testing the game, deceived the leadership of the Polish studio and, in general, let the developers down.

How exactly is the process of A/B testing of visual content for app stores built in Belka Games, – in his article for App2Top.ru the leading ASO-manager of the company Anastasia Personal told.

Activision Blizzard has decided to convert 1,100 testers to full-time employees and increase their pay in the wake of ongoing criticism. However, members of the Raven Software QA team won’t get any raises.

tinyBuild is expanding. The company includes the American publisher Versus Evil and its internal studio Red Cerberus, specializing in QA. The total amount of the transaction may amount to $31.3 million.The Banner Saga 3

The release of a trilogy of remasters of classic GTA turned into a failure. User ratings on Metacritic dropped to 0.5/10 — one of the worst results in history. Players complain massively about bugs, the depressing technical condition of the project and demand a refund. At the same time, remasters were unavailable for launch for three days.

Today, a full-fledged release of PUBG: New State took place on mobile platforms. It turned out to be problematic. Many players were unable to log into the game as a result of a server malfunction. There were also a lot of bugs in the project, some of which have already been recognized by the developers themselves.

Testers often do not receive proper recognition in the gaming industry. Jocelyn Baxter, the screenwriter of Eidos Montreal, decided to fix the situation. She said that most of the Guardians of the Galaxy storyline was written by those who had previously been involved in testing.

Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy was released today. Despite the initial skepticism, the game exceeded the expectations of many critics. Some even call it “the new standard for comic book video games.” However, there were some negative aspects. Most of all complain about the abundance of bugs and too simple fighting.

Mobile publisher Playrix has announced the results of its annual nonprofit contest, which lets employees request finances for a charity of their choice. The company allocated a total of $115,000 for this initiative.

Shiro Games, the France-based developer of Northgard and Evoland, has launched a new publishing label called Shiro Unlimited.

Tomorrow Valve will start testing the official version of Steam for China. However, local users expressed their dissatisfaction with what was happening. They fear that they will soon be deprived of the opportunity to play thousands of games due to the unavailability of the international version of the store.What is the dissatisfaction of gamers?

Blizzard announced the start of closed alpha testing of Diablo Immortal, a mobile offshoot of the famous RPG. Only users from Australia will be able to participate in it. They will have to check the technical condition of the project. At the same time, the game still does not have a release date.

In the Play Store, it is now possible to compare several applications with each other on the same screen. While the function is in test mode, however, Google itself does not say when it will become available to a wide range of users and whether it will be at all.Attention was drawn to this by the Android Police portal.

The authors of Angry Birds have become another company that decided to borrow the experience of Playrix. She released match-3, which is very close in mechanics and concept to such box office hits as Homescapes and Gardenscapes.

Maxim Kordonets — Head of Community & Support of Belka Games studio — in his column for readers App2Top.ru he shared his experience of how he rebuilt the community and support department in a mobile company in a year.

Blizzard lost one of its esports sponsors, Mitsubishi Motors. The company decided to pull its dollars in response to how Blizzard treated Chung ‘blitzchung’ Ng Wai, who openly supported Hong Kong protestors during an official Hearthstone livestream.