Test Games Online for Money: Best Game Testing Platforms for 2023

To earn a living by testing games is something that many of us dream about. Some of you may have already achieved that dream, while others are still taking baby steps and learning the ropes. Before you decide that you deserve a spot and a six-figure salary working on QA for Activision-Blizzard, Electronic Arts or Ubisoft, maybe you should understand that this is a demanding job, and it can be quite stressful and sometimes unfair. So, the alternative and quite honestly the best way to start is to join one of the few legit services where you can test games online for money, and play unreleased games in the process. Keep reading to find our Best Game Testing Platforms list, but before that, some info on how these services work.

As a player and wannabe tester, you are in no way contractually obliged to perform any service to these companies. You should consider them as a privilege and not as a right, seeing that you can earn money, gift cards, Steam cards, and more from them in exchange for a few hours of your time every so often, comprehensive feedback and suggestions on how to improve the game, mostly unreleased titles under a scrutinous NDA.

NDA stands for Non-Disclosure Agreement and this means you must keep all the details of a test and respective game secret. Failure to comply with it may lead to serious legal issues, so remember to always abide by it.

Finally, one last major advice: do your best at every chance. Great performance will see you climbing ranks and getting more and more tests. Deliver your feedback as if future tests depend on it, and in fact they do.

You can check more tips on how to become a successful game tester at the end of this article, or you can click on Priceless Tips to Get Ahead in Game Testing to read them right ahead.

Best Game Testing Online Platforms for 2023

Website: http://gametester.gg
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GameTester.gg
Twitter: https://twitter.com/GameTesterNews

Game Tester is the undisputed winner of the group. Founded in 2015 by two Australian brothers, David and Paul Dobson, it experienced huge growth in the last couple of years and led to its acquisition by Lionbridge in September 2022. It’s a versatile platform that offers a full-fledged site with everything both a tester and a developer require – with extensive tools to customize tests and analyze budgets, it’s extremely easy for all developers, big or small (or even students) to set up and run a test in a few minutes.

But it’s the tester part that interests us here. The in-depth gamer profile will help Game Tester get an idea on what type of gamer you are, which platforms you own – from PC to Android, iOS, even VR – and your favorite genres. A nice detail that will appeal to the gamer in you is the Achievements area, where you can perform activities to earn GT Gold and XP, and this should be the first thing you do after completing your profile and doing the introductory Gems of War test.

GT Gold is the currency that you earn from completing Achievements and tests. When you have 25K (where 1K equals USD $1) you can access the online store and trade it for XTRM credit. The process is fast and simple – your first reward should be delivered in around five business days, and the Game Tester team creates your XTRM login –you can withdraw the credit from XTRM in several ways, from bank transfer (confirming that your country supports this) to gift cards in stores such as Amazon.

It's impossible to nail down the average reward for each test, because it depends on many factors including the number of questions in the survey, but it’s somewhere around USD $6 and $10 per hour. You must add feedback time to that playtime, once again very hard to pinpoint, but good testers usually spend at least one hour typing and organizing their constructive feedback.

After submitting your test feedback, you instantly earn your GT Gold and XP rewards, which is fantastic considering that other platforms may take around one month to pay you for each test. However, if your feedback is subpar and clearly intending to trick the system, you may have your rewards revoked and your account banned, so don’t think about cheating the system as it will cost you dearly in the long run.

What’s great about Game Tester is that it’s by far the platform with the best test frequency in the market. Even with over 350.000 registered testers, it tries to play it fair by providing new and old testers equal opportunities. So, let’s say as a vague example that for a certain test you get 70% spots allocated to VIPs and regular testers, while the remaining 30% will go to testers who have registered recently.

Invites arrive to the email you used to register on the website or via notification in your phone, so it’s nearly impossible to miss, and you don’t have to fill a questionnaire every time to submit your interest in a test – your Game Tester profile does all the work. Obviously, you need to act fast, or the test slots will be quickly claimed by other eager testers.

Game Tester rewards testers that consistently contribute with high-quality and reliable feedback with a VIP rank. This rank places them on top of the priority list, allowing them to enjoy a more frequent test rate. Obviously, tests also depend on demographics and other developer requests, so naturally a player residing in India may not get the same requests as a tester living in United Kingdom, for example.

The official Discord is where many testers gather and discuss several topics, all with a focus on being cheery and helpful. Of course, the Game Tester admins are there to help you with any questions you may have, always with a very friendly and supportive approach.

Overall, Game Tester is a brilliant way to get yourself into game testing and earn a very good amount of money online, if you set yourself to take things seriously and deliver great feedback.

Website: https://antidote.gg/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AntidoteGG/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AntidoteGG

Antidote hails from Barcelona, Spain and was founded in 2016. It has grown considerably in recent years and offers a nice variety of game test formats, surely one of its great strengths. You can participate in gameplay tests with a survey afterwards, which can wildly vary in size, but there are other types of tests as well.

To apply for a test, you must join the Discord server and jump on the #playtests channel, where announcements are made. Filling a survey is vital for every single test, so if you don’t do this, don’t expect to be selected. These surveys will try to filter the more appropriate players for a specific test, asking questions such as which games you have played from a shortlist, if you enjoy a particular genre, own a mic and a webcam, and if you are available on a certain day and time in the case of multiplayer games. Sometimes you may be directly chosen for an unannounced playtest via email invite, but the spots are limited and will be filled in a few minutes.

Comparing to Game Tester, the Antidote website is barebones. It features your gamer profile, tracks all your past, active, and future projects, the rewards in Antidote coins, has the store for you to trade them for Amazon and Steam gift cards among others, and everything that you need to check your account, but it’s very raw.

To start a project you must download and launch the app for PC and/or mobile, as you must always use it to track your progress until its completion. Afterwards, your recorded file will be uploaded to Antidote, and if the upload fails halfway for some reason, there’s the option to resume it. Up until now, the downside of this system is that you are forced to install every test file on the C:/ drive. Despite many requests to allow testers to choose the installation folder, this feature is yet to be deployed, so you can expect to see some complaints about this, especially considering that some tests come with a large installation size.

Most tests will be open to players who are willing to let their screen be recorded and to “think aloud,” which is a way of saying that you must play and speak into your microphone about your feelings for the duration of the playtest. Naturally, if you aren’t comfortable speaking English, this is going to be a big issue for you.

Other tests may give you an extra reward for a post-gameplay interview with the developers via online video call. This is where you’ll go one-on-one and answer questions in more depth, giving the devs a better outlook on some specific areas of the game. You can also offer to join a focus group, where you and other testers will be questioned on some topics for the test, usually by the Antidote staff, but the developers may be present as well. Having a webcam isn’t always a requirement, but it doesn’t hurt to have one just in case.

Again, it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact reward per test, but usually you may get between 5000 and 10000 coins per hour of testing, plus the survey time. This may or may not include screen and voice recording, depends on the needs of the developers – sometimes a few testers may be assigned to do it, while others simply play and answer the survey on the same test. 5000 coins roughly equate $10, so you do the math.

One of the downsides is that you may have to wait over a month to get your gift card or other type of reward that you claimed. Antidote staff usually send rewards in batches, but if your redemption is a bit off the regular schedule or there’s some other delay, you may have to hang in there. But don’t worry, it will come, Antidote is completely reliable.

Support is also debatable if you stumble upon a problem during testing, so you may have to wait a few hours or days to hear from the staff. Admittedly, there’s been an effort as of late 2022 to hire more support staff and things seem to be steadily improving in this regard.

It’s not easy to join an Antidote test and it’s understandable if you become frustrated, especially considering that playtests are few and far between when compared to Game Tester, but it’s a reputable and reliable online game testing service for those lucky enough to be chosen regularly.

Website: https://games.lionbridge.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/L10nbridge/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Lionbridge

Lionbridge is a huge company spawning several areas, from localization services to AI, and of course game testing. Tests aren’t the focus of the company and that’s surely what lead it to acquire Game Tester in September 2022. However, before that we still had some tests running for major companies, including Amazon Games or Sony.

Most Lionbridge tests were usually focused on the multiplayer and stress test part of things, but the odd single-player test was also a thing. It’s in the Discord server that everything happens, from test announcements to recruitment and post-game surveys. The process of applying to a test isn’t the most intuitive, as it asks potential testers to fill an online form (Google or Office, for example) with some user demographics and specs, most of the time involving uploading a DxDiag. With no site to enter your profile details, Lionbridge requires testers to resort to this for every test, possibly one of the shortcomings that made the company look closely at Game Tester.

In terms of testing, you always have clear instructions and on-the-fly support from admins, something in common for all the services listed here but for Antidote, which may take a while to get back to you. Occasionally you may find yourself recruited into a more complicated test involving Excel spreadsheets and formulas to analyze data, so you should be prepared and focused as these are not your standard “play and write” tests.

Payment is usually around $10 an hour via PayPal only (as always, these figures may vary), and it’s as reliable as they come in this regard.

With Game Tester’s acquisition and integration, Lionbridge is taking a less prominent approach but is still going to offer focus tests, so it’s definitely worth checking out for this.

Website: https://daqa.net/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DigitalAgeQualityAssurance

DAQA, which is short for Digital Age Quality Assurance, is another solid game testing service where the big challenge will be to get a steady stream of tests. From massive 1000+ concurrent players to small-scale single-player tests with less than 10 slots, there’s a wide diversity of options to apply, again via Discord only. In the case of the former, some tests have DAQA staff guiding you through all the steps, giving you instructions, and acting like the funniest chaperons you’ve ever witnessed.

Test applications are made via Cognito Forms, a simple process that usually requires nothing but picking Yes or No from various options and ticking some boxes with games that you played recently. A microphone is vital for most tests, and a webcam is another gadget that you should get used to work with. You need to record your screen and voice for some tests, usually going through TopMod, GoTestify or OBS.

Tests pay an average of one to two US dollars above local hourly minimum wage for each region, so your overall reward will depend on where you are based. Payment is only via PayPal and it takes roughly one month to receive the money.

DAQA offers some interesting QA modules for each user to go through and learn more about the business practices. Think of these as exams that could last at least one hour each and covers different topics, from Focus Testing to Glossary or Pre-Production QA, among others. It’s a terrific training ground but doesn’t affect in any way your ability to receive invites or tests, so think of it as a way to learn more about the ins and outs of the business.

The issue with DAQA is the same as with the others bar Game Tester – it may take several weeks or months to be picked for a test. You may be lucky and find an announcement asking for 1500 players for a specific test, which is almost a guarantee that you will be selected if you fulfill the requirements; but joining smaller tests is a struggle that may leave you frustrated.

Priceless Tips to Get Ahead in Game Testing

Let’s face it: game testing is great, but there are limited opportunities and countless players just like you and me striving to get their foot in the door. These platforms are a terrific way to begin with, but while you aren’t under a contract, it’s still a business and you should take it very seriously if you have any ambitions or expectations. Here are some crucial tips to help you get noticed and avoid mistakes.

Always be truthful

Lying in your profile details is a great way to be blacklisted forever from one of these websites. This is one of the most important means they have to understand who you are and what kind of tests are best suited for you. Always tell the truth regarding your age, country, available platforms, and everything else really, to show that you are there for the long run and not just to earn some quick bucks by providing some low-effort and low-quality work.

Most tests have somewhat comfortable deadlines, which is a good thing – you may have two full days to deliver feedback on a test that requires two to three hours of playing and writing. Don’t let the looming shadow of procrastination hit you, as leaving things for later usually turns out to be a bad decision, because life happens and failing a test leaves a very dangerous and visible red flag in your account.

Then you have the multiplayer and/or stress tests. In this case, you must be online at a given time, no other opportunities. The purpose of these tests may be to focus on a simultaneous large number of players, or to evaluate mechanics that need various players online at the same time. Failure to show up on time is a strong sign to the admins that you don’t really care, and you’re not reliable. The consequence of repeated failures is that you will drop down on the priority list until you eventually become a “ghost,” meaning that you won’t get more invites.

The least you can do when some force majeure prevents you from showing up – happens to the best of us – is to warn the admins or mods that you won’t be able to participate. Sickness, for example, is something that may hit everyone at the worst time, so if you can let the admins know about it preferably at least a day before the allocated time, they have a margin to find another tester and reuse that spot.

Take notes

I’m pretty sure that you have a great memory and you’re capable of unearthing weird stuff from your teenage years. But game testing is about the momentum and it’s important to take notes on what comes to your mind at the time, or the bugs that just happened – in this case, it’s crucial to annotate the steps you took for the bug to happen, so that the developers may attempt to replicate them.

You don’t need to write elaborate notes if you don’t want to; brief sentences may work as perfect memory triggers for you to recall exactly what you want to say in detail. Use Word if the game allows for Alt-Tab, resort to the good old pen and paper, or record your voice as you play – choose the approach that works the best for you, we are all different.

Don’t settle for the bare minimum

This may change according to which platform you are using, but let’s say that a game asks you to play for one full hour. If you are really devoted to this, the deadline is comfortable, and the session doesn’t end automatically, feel free to continue playing and exploring the game. Find out more about it, enrichen your feedback, and make sure that you deliver constructive criticism and suggestions that add value to the concept of the game. Obviously, saying that a farming simulator could do with a battle royale mode, or that a linear RPG would be much better if it were open world aren’t good suggestions; you’re just making stuff up and your feedback will be silly and bloated. Keep things real and remember that developers must work within a budget and strict time window.

When the playthrough is over and it’s time to start answering the survey and typing your feedback, don’t go for the bare minimum. Imagine yourself as part of the development team and type everything that you believe would help them create a better game. Quality feedback is great for several reasons: it helps the developers, makes your account noticed and increase the test invite frequency, and gives you this cozy feeling of a job well done.

It’s not the size that matters, it’s how you use it

Remember this: you’re not writing a thesis; you’re giving your honest and unbiased opinion on a game or app that is under development. No one wants to read six pages comprised of your opinion on the motivations of the main character or how the map should feature more diverse biomes. Don’t go for large for the sake of visibility; this may have the opposite effect and the developers might skim through your words instead of reading it all, possibly missing valuable suggestions in the process.

Be practical, be effective. Don’t beat around the bush, just write what you want in some detail, but avoid walls of text if they don’t add anything of value into your feedback.

Don’t be a kiss-ass

If you like to butter up your way to stardom, then maybe this isn’t the best online job for you. Delivering positive feedback frequently without any solid foundations may get you attention, but of the negative kind. “I love this game, keep it up” or “What a fantastic game, I’m definitely going to buy it when it releases” are the kind of sentences that need to be backed up by some quality feedback, otherwise it will be purely known as “sucking up to the boss.”

Know one thing: developers aren’t looking for your validation; they are looking for constructive criticism, attentive eyes, and a way to measure the project’s appeal. If your way of going mostly consists of being a yes man, this may be reflected in your account and tarnish your reputation as a tester.

Be prepared for curveballs

Did you think remote game testing was all about playing games and chill? Think again, because the best testers are versatile and ready to take on different challenges. While most tests do consist of gameplay and feedback, some of them are challenging in their own ways.

For example, you may be asked to judge the appeal of a wide range of mobile apps, with no gaming in sight. Other times, you are shown a few artworks and asked to give your thoughts on the UI or the appeal of the characters. Attention to detail, knowledge of the current trends, and a focused mind will help you deliver positive feedback and get noticed.

Take care of grammar and presentation

Like it or not, the vast majority of tests will require you to write in English. This is a fact and there’s nothing you can do about it – no one wants to read feedback in broken English, that’s an instant turn-off. If you don’t feel comfortable at all writing in English, then maybe this isn’t for you. But if you know how to handle yourself and just need some practice, you’re off to a good start. Try to expand on your vocabulary, read all the available info and tips on the best practices for feedback, and use some apps to help you out, such as Grammarly.

Also, take care of your presentation. Introduce your topics in a clear, concise way, caring about formatting and the overall aspect of it. Present your feedback in a way that it’s easy to read and even easier to understand, with bullet points and breaks whenever necessary.

We hope this guide will help you get started in the best available platforms to test games online for money. Remember that things don't fall from the sky; this requires work, dedication, and an open mind. In the end, you may be one of those who will be extremely happy to have explored these opportunities.