Side and Razer are teaming up to create a new kind of mass playtesting tool for the game industry using AI.
Made possible by leveraging Side’s proprietary AI technology, playtest data is simultaneously used to improve quality assurance results – an industry first. Based on pricing comparisons from major playtest providers, it could reduce playtesting costs by 80% in some cases. In this case, Side provides the testing tech and Razer provides more than 55 million gamers, who will sign NDAs for early game build tests.
Razer Cortex: Playtest Program
Powered by Side combines traditional playtesting features with QA on a massive scale, making it the first all-in-one testing solution for developers looking for both qualitative and technical feedback.
The new tool will launch within Razer Cortex, Razer’s PC game launcher with over 55 million global users, enabling developers to run large-scale, targeted playtests with real players.
Gamers who meet eligibility criteria can opt in to playtests directly through Razer Cortex. Through the launcher, they sign NDAs and receive unique download keys for game builds, ensuring secure and confidential access. During gameplay, Cortex tracks playtime and performance data. After completing specific requirements, players submit their feedback through qualitative surveys and are rewarded with Razer Silver rewards, which can be redeemed for games or gear, creating a meaningful incentive for participation.
The collected gameplay and sentiment data is analyzed by Side’s proprietary AI, which removes duplicate data; the reports are finally interpreted and validated by Side’s expert QA teams, making it possible to deliver actionable insights at a fraction of the costs.
Deborah Kirkham, CEO of Side, said in a statement, “The gaming industry is infamous for being slow to adapt to new technology; with our partners at Razer, we are aggressively bucking that trend with Razer Cortex: Playtest Program – Powered by Side. Our passion is bringing our client’s stories to the world, and there’s no better data source for feedback than hardcore gamers.
If storytelling is your business, your play testers are your shareholders – our unique solution makes it possible to give your biggest advocates a seat at the table, nurturing that initial investment in your IP to ultimately drive sales at launch. Simultaneously, we use the same data collected during playtests to deliver better QA results on your title. It’s a win win win for the player, developer, and us at Side.”
A new era of playtesting
Playtesting is one of the most critical yet resource-intensive phases of game development. Traditional methods rely on small, manually recruited groups and lengthy survey processes, often resulting in limited insights and high costs.
Razer Cortex: Playtest Program – Powered By Side leverages Razer’s massive global community and Cortex’s built-in capabilities as a game launcher to pre-qualify play testers based on how players engage with games, their interests, and general profiles. This allows developers to bypass traditional recruitment bottlenecks and tap into a diverse, relevant pool of testers with greater efficiency.
Quyen Quach, vice president of software at Razer, said in a statement, “Razer Cortex: Playtest Program – Powered by Side is a new feature within our game launcher that gives developers a cost-effective way to run playtests at scale. By integrating Side’s solution into Razer Cortex, we simplify build distribution, enable targeted player selection, and support structured data collection. This collaboration helps developers connect with engaged players and gather meaningful feedback to support better development decisions.”
Developers can target player pools based on gameplay behaviour, experience, and eventually, broader audience insights. This could also enable player-led Localisation testing in the future.
Human-in-the-loop AI
For most triple-A titles, QA teams are made up of five to six people working in a fully secure environment. There are numerous ways to test games, but unlike play testers who play for fun or completion, QA teams attempt to “break” the game by focussing their time on key moments and areas that players are most likely to interact with.
Razer Cortex: Playtest Program – Powered by Side arms that same QA team with data collected from players who are playing the game authentically for entertainment purposes. This allows the professionals at Side to catch bugs that could have potentially flown under the radar in a lab setting. If a playtest comes back with multiple reports of a crash in the same section, our testers know to start looking for a bug.
The development of this tool reflects Side’s commitment to infuse technology with human ingenuity. Providing playtest reports of this calibre to human QA teams would not be possible without the company’s significant investment in AI-enabled gaming services solutions. Building AI into Side’s workflows is critical to keeping both their clients and team ahead, with 87% of developers saying that they were already using AI, according to a recent industry survey.
Harlan Beverly, CTO of Side, said, in a statement, “This partnership between Side and Razer is responsible for changing the paradigm of playtesting forever. For developers, it means more testers and more playtest hours at the same or lower cost; for players, it means being closer than ever to the development process and for QA, it’s adding a whole new workstream to their role.
Our QA teams and clients are going to have access to more real players and more useful data – well before a product’s Beta test – than they ever thought possible. This shift from the industry standard of small volume, high touch to high volume, low touch playtests allows for a level of AI-based analytics that no one has ever done before. This program is what disruption looks like in real-time.”
Industry Impact
For developers, Side will be able to provide deeper insights at scale with enhanced sentiment analysis, feedback from target demographics, and functionality testing all at a substantially lower cost than industry norms.
Research from the University of Ontario found that playtesting spotted issues in games before they were put in front of the critics. Given that reviews have a huge impact on sales (New York City Data Science Academy), playtesting plays a critical role in preparing a game for commercial success. The ability to run large playtests at a reasonable cost with the added value of expert QA input is what makes the solution disruptive and unique in the gaming services marketplace.
For players, this solution creates the opportunity for unprecedented closeness to the industry they love. They get to share their feedback directly with the developers of the franchises they have invested in – ahead of the public release – an experience usually only available to press and influencers. For developers, it is an invaluable sense check, an opportunity to respond and pivot before official launch.
Razer Cortex: Playtest Program – Powered by Side is just one of Side’s playtesting solutions, their portfolio of services offers a range of playtesting options for both mass and small-scale playtesting.
The opportunities and tradeoffs
Eric Vezzoli, director of technology at Razer, said in an interview with GamesBeat at Gamescom that he was happy to introduce the groundbreaking tech with Side. He thiniks players will be excited to test new games, even if they are sworn to secrecy.
Harlan Beverly CTO at Side, said in an interview with GamesBeat at Gamescom that his firm provides services like co-development, art, quality and assurance, audio, localization, player support and more for top game companies.
“We saw an opportunity for completely revolutionizing the way game companies do play testing,”Beverly said.
Razer’s Cortex tech has amassed more than 50 million hardcore gamers. Cortex optimizes gameplay, records how much people play, and offers rewards for gamers. For me, it told me how hot Battlefield 6 was running on my PC.
“We came up with an idea. What if we could get pre-release games in front of trusted gamers, gamers that we trust, to test the game, to give us feedback, but not leak it to the press, not leak the game too soon, before it’s ready?” Beverly said.
This could work even for games in pre-alpha state, and game companies could benefit by having tons of players give feedback on gameplay — when it can still be fixed.
Asked about the leaks that have happened with large playtests like Battlefield 6, Vezzoli said this is about a paradigm shift where playtesting will evolve with QA elements that couldn’t have been done before.
“Once you put something in the hands of 100,000 people, there’s always going to be problems, but we’re doing our best to mitigate it,” Vezzoli said.
One point: the value of more people testing a game probably exceeds the concern that one person might leak it. Gamers who have 1,000 hours of first-person experience in Cortex can offer valuable feedback, and they can earn currency in the form of Razer Silver and Razer Gold. Players don’t necessarily want to risk those privileges by leaking info.
Some of the testing has been high-touch in the past with 10 or 20 testers. But now it’s possible to get 100 to 1,000 players playing a game, allowing more statistical analysis, Beverly said.
“You can get data that you couldn’t get before, across a much larger audience for the same price. One of the key elements is how stable is the game, and what do people like or dislike,” he said.
Now, the testing could be 80% cheaper than traditional playtesting, meaning you can get eight or ten times as much feedback from many more players for the same amount of money.
“We can have very granular information on our users,” Beverly said.
In the background, the AI can remove any duplicate feedback from players.