Major game studios believed this company was providing experienced, well-staffed QA teams—employees say that was a lie

pcgamer.com:

Testing videogames is a challenging job, and it's only becoming more challenging as games get bigger and more complex. What would make the job even trickier, however, is covering for the work of three other testers⁠ while pretending you have a full team to the developer that contracted the work. That's the kind of thing a number of QA developers say they were directed to do while testing major games at a large third-party testing house.

Two current and eight former workers at prolific Romanian quality assurance outsourcer Quantic Lab spoke to PC Gamer about their jobs on the condition of anonymity, alleging that management not only pressures its testers above and beyond the norm for this vital but too often under-resourced subset of game development, but also misleads clients about the size and competency of its QA teams⁠—and directs employees to keep up the charade.

You're likely unfamiliar with Quantic Lab, which is based in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, but you will know the games this Embracer Group subsidiary worked on: Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Necromunda Hired Gun, Cities Skylines, and more were all tested by Quantic employees. Testers had access to development builds of these games, scrutinizing them for glitches and potential blocks to progress in a similar way to how speedrunners attempt to «break» a game following release.

In June, a series of videos from gaming YouTube channel Upper Echelon Gamers(opens in new tab) drew attention to Quantic's alleged mismanagement and duplicitous business practices. UEG focused on the testimony of former members of Quantic's Cyberpunk 2077 QA team, the distress management caused those workers, and the negative impact this had on