How Much Time Do Game Studios Really Spend on Testing?

Take indie developers, for example. For a crowdfunded project, one tester mentioned spending over 200 hours playtesting and giving feedback over two years. And that was just them. The lead designer? Easily clocked in thousands of hours, refining every detail along the way. This wasn’t a one-person effort, though. Playtest groups were formed, each putting in anywhere from 50 to 200 hours, all focused on making the game as polished as possible.

Now, jump to AA games. Here, testing takes a different approach. Developers often play their own game throughout development, sometimes every few minutes or hours, depending on their role. Programmers and designers constantly test their own work. Every now and then, they’ll have small playtesting sessions with friends or colleagues—maybe four or five sessions during the process. The total testing time for AA titles can easily surpass 2000 hours, as these studios aim to balance their artistic vision with a more niche but passionate player base.

And then there’s AAA. This is where things get really intense. For instance, BioWare spent over 200,000 hours testing just the PC version of Dragon Age: The Veilguard by BioWare— and that’s only 40% of their total testing effort. Across all platforms, they put in an estimated 500,000 hours of testing before launch. That’s years of collective effort to ensure everything works flawlessly, with millions of players in mind.

So whether it’s indie teams working through hundreds of hours, or AAA studios logging half a million, testing is a huge part of game development. It’s not just about squashing bugs; it’s about making sure every detail feels right for the players. ⚙️