Testing video games is hard work, and it gets harder and harder as games get bigger and more complex. However, what would make the task even more complicated is to cover the works of 3 other testers while pretending to have a full team for the developer who hired the paintings. This is the kind of thing that several QA developers say they’ve been asked to do when testing core games at a large third-party testhouse.
Two current and 8 former painters from the prolific Romanian QA contractor Quantic Lab spoke to PC Gamer about their paintings on condition of anonymity, claiming that the control is not only pushing their testers beyond the norm for this important but underfunded subset of game development, however, It also misleads consumers about the length and competence of its quality control groups and orders painters to continue with the charade.
You’re probably not familiar with Quantic Lab, which was founded in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, but you know the games this Embracer Group subsidiary has worked on: Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Necromunda Hired Gun, Cities Skylines, and many others have been tested by Quantum employees. Testers had to test progression versions of those games, examining them for potential issues and crashes to progress in the same way speed racers try to “break” a game. after its release.
In June, a series of videos from Upper Echelon Gamers’ YouTube gaming channel (opens in new tab) drew attention to Quantic’s alleged mismanagement and deceptive marketing practices. of the misery caused to those workers, and the negative effect this had on the development of Cyberpunk.
Doru Șupeală, a journalist of the Romanian generation, has published several testimonies of former Quantic workers who allege bad practices through the control of their sub-stack, Hacking Work (opens in new window). Șupeală provided invaluable help in the search for this story. Quantic also researched through the Romanian media outlet Libertatea (opens in a new tab), which published similar findings.
The workers I spoke to described an environment in which Quantic was constantly operating beyond its means, taking on more projects than it had the capacity to do and stretching its staff too far between them.
They said those issues came to a head when the company signed contracts to test Cyberpunk 2077 and NBA 2K21. Cyberpunk has been a bit like a lightning rod for Quantic, but the company doesn’t seem to be officially accredited in 2K21, a practice one of the lately active workers mentioned.
“Unfortunately, many Quantic Lab testers were not credited on each and every game they tested,” they said. “In some cases, publishers’ criteria for crediting a user was whether they worked more than five months on that game. 4 months and two weeks in this game, they would not be credited. “
Several workers we spoke to were very concerned about Quantic’s testing of Cyberpunk 2077. They allege that Cyberpunk 2077 and NBA 2K were a gravity well for the company, attracting abilities from other divisions and leaving other tasks below even the Cyberpunk task. In particular, it failed. All the workers we spoke to indicated that those two flagship tasks were fully performed, but not with the experienced testers promised to customers.
“Out of a team of 30 other people [originally assigned to Cyberpunk 2077], I think only 10 of them reveled in quality assurance,” a source who worked on Cyberpunk for Quantum told us. Of the 10, they said that “none of the ‘revel ind’ testers were more than a year old. “
Several of the workers we spoke to discussed that the control had told them not to communicate the number of years they had worked in the industry when communicating with CD Projekt workers, and agreed that the Polish developer did not understand the point of delight he had. paid with your quality control team at Quantic. They said CDPR contacted Quantic several times about the team’s disappointing performance.
Quantic’s Cyberpunk team would double down halfway through progression, but lack of experience, Covid-19 outbreak, and direction of Quantic control that clashed with CD Projekt’s progression priorities led to Quantic’s poor performance to the other QA groups CDPR had been running on the project.
Workers familiar with the task told us that one of the disruptions in which testers completed many low-impact bug reports to meet daily quotas set through Quantum management. CDPR developers were receiving many reports of low-priority graphical upheavals and Quantic. The raters shifted their attention from locating higher-priority disorders, such as the major search disorders that block progression and reached the final release.
Several former assignment staff members have indicated that Quantic’s contract with CDPR is open for the extension through Cyberpunk updates and expansions, but it was not renewed when it expired in 2021.
Quantic is one of many QA groups running on Cyberpunk 2077, adding QLOC S. A. and CDPR’s internal team, but the fact is that Quantic’s mismanagement has left a third of the Cyberpunk game’s QA workforce suffering to fulfill their fundamental obligations.
“I wouldn’t blame Cyberpunk for [Quantic], the CDPR still released these fucking things,” one of the former Quantic workers who worked on the game told us, “but the fact that the game in the itArray [Quantic] state contributed. “The same worker argued that a better-managed team at the same station could have stored valuable CD Projekt time on the project.
It was not unusual to see entire projects controlled by a single person, which required a team of one to three evaluators.
Along with Cyberpunk, the company’s normal paintings on other smaller projects continued, but with exacerbated staffing issues. .
According to several sources, those small projects would run understaffed, while control stressed workers to create the appearance of entire teams. “On small projects, you were lucky enough to have at least a portion of the fitting rooms,” says one former employee.
The degree of understaffing on a given task is not a static situation. The games would go through a series of tests and the groups that would manage them would be in other talents at other stages. At some point in development, a task would possibly be at or close to completing its capability and then returning for another round, but this time controlled by a small team.
“It wasn’t unusual to see entire projects controlled by a single person, which required a team of one to three testers [in addition to the main tester],” one former official told us. “Some core testers were controlling two to three projects at a time. “time, probably with fewer testers than the mandatory ones assigned to each one. “
Our resources told us that the “top testers” at Quantic only have one to three years of industry experience due to Quantic focusing on recent graduates and the highest turnover in the company. For context, a source with experience in a AAA quality assurance branch told us that a prospect ascended “quickly” if they reached that point from the access point in two and a half years, while some of the Quantic workers we spoke to faced this professional pressure point, at a lower compensation point. in less than a year.
According to employees, those core testers are in a position to maintain the fiction of a team’s length and competence in communicating with customers, in addition to the normal pressures of trying out a game.
“I’m the main visitor tester and I had to do that [lie about the length of your team],” one former manager told us. “I’ve done this dozens of damn times. ” They found the experience unpleasant, but say they did so because of a lack of other career prospects, especially at the height of the pandemic.
Several of our resources have verified that clients have been misled in the way they have recorded their work. Quantic verifiers typically use a database called Jira to record bugs for customers. Typically, an individual verifier will have their own Jira account that they use to report issues, however, the staff I spoke to alleged that Quantic verifiers would be encouraged to log into the accounts of verifiers who quit, were sick, assigned to other projects between verification runs, or never touched the game in consultation to avoid differences in activity that may raise questions about size. of the team.
Compounding those cheating practices, the workers who spoke to us said they were working in a poisonous environment for low pay. A former senior worker said that managers insulted and reprimanded the main testers, and this tension was transmitted to the larger teams.
Several workers told us that the control would directly indicate that trying games was unskilled work, consistent with perhaps helping the higher turnover rate or treating workers as consumables. earned close to the minimum wage (1,450 Romanian lei, or about €300 consistent with the month), with no bonus. A full lead tester can expect to earn around €680/month, which we talked to according to the former workers we spoke to was still incredibly difficult to live with in Cluj.
I never tried painting in the progression of the game again, although at first it was my hobby.
Like many painting venues, the Covid-19 outbreak has negatively impacted Quantic Lab, and the staff we spoke to were very critical of Quantic’s reaction. We were told that the privileges of fleeing the house were granted unevenly and largely reserved for senior executives. , despite the fact that remote paintings remained widely in the gaming industry in reaction to the pandemic. Fitting rooms were placed side by side, and several staff members attested to a notorious meeting in which an HR painter said only six feet of social distancing was needed when Americans were face-to-face, and it sure would be closer until that was the case.
In the end, the workers we spoke to felt exhausted by the low-paid and stressful environment, lack of support, and small humiliations that come with running in so-called “low-skilled” work, especially at the height of the pandemic. “At this point, [Quantic] pays for my therapy,” one said.
Most of the former painters we spoke to went on to other jobs in generation and games, and admitted that they had at least gotten something to put on a resume. Another didn’t even tell the company, “Quantic made me hate games and video games. I never tried painting in the progression of the game again, although at first it was my hobby. “
Quantic Lab responded to a request for comment in time for publication.
In addition to Quantic Lab’s express problems, quality control is already a poorly paid and underrated facet of game development. Quality assurance personnel are external contractors, either enterprise-wide, such as Quantic, or individually, with disparities in pay, benefits, and job security. with the salaried staff that this implies.
The good fortune of Game Workers United’s quality control union at Raven Software presents a possible way forward, but unionization, especially in a new industry for union action and in a high-turnover company, is inherently challenging.
The workers we spoke to were pessimistic about Quantic’s customers getting better because of the existing negative attention. One said it would require a top-down control review by the owners of the Embracer Group company, which acquired the company in November 2020.
Ted thinks about PC games and has been bothering anyone who pays attention to them with his mind since he started copying his sister’s Neverwinter Nights on the family circle’s computer. He’s obsessed with all things CRPG and CRPG, but he’s also covered esports, modifying, and collecting rare games. When he’s not betting or writing about games, you can locate Ted lifting weights on his back porch.
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