“If storytelling is your business, 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, analyzed by our world-class AI, 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.  

The 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, VP of Software at Razer, said: “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 behavior, experience, and eventually, broader audience insights. This could also enable player-led localization testing in the future. 

How it Works

Human-in-the-Loop AI

For most AAA titles, QA teams are made up of 5-6 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 focusing their time on key moments and areas that players are most likely to interact with.  

The 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 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 our commitment to infusing technology with human ingenuity. Providing playtest reports of this calibre to human QA teams would not be possible without Side’s significant investment in AI-enabled gaming services solutions. Building AI into our workflows is critical to keeping both our clients and team ahead, with 87% of developers saying that they were already using AI, according to a recent industry survey. 

Dr. Harlan Beverly, Chief Technology Officer at Side, said: “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, we 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.  

The Razer Cortex: Playtest Program – Powered by Side is just one of our playtesting solutions. Our full portfolio of services offers a range of playtesting options for both mass and small-scale playtesting.

For more information or to get your game tested with us, visit our playtesting page and get in touch.