If you’ve ever wondered who exactly is giving feedback on your game through PlaytestCloud, you’re not alone. For a lot of teams, the player panel can feel like a bit of a black box. Who are these people? Are they real? Are they just saying what we want to hear?
If you've tried recruiting your own players or managing your own playtester community, you've probably run into a few frustrating situations: players who disappear, or don’t fill out your surveys. Feedback that feels sugar-coated or isn’t specific enough to be actionable. Trying to reach the right players, but ending up with other game developers instead.
We’ve put a lot of care into building one of the largest and highest-quality player panels in the gaming industry (and keeping it that way). We pay players fairly (and fast), only accept a portion of applicants, and actively monitor for fraud and low-quality testers. It’s how we make sure your playtests are filled with real, thoughtful gamers, not just anyone with a keyboard.
Even so, there are a few lingering misconceptions. Let’s take a moment to pull back the curtain and clear those up.
Our players are real and carefully selected
TRUE. We don’t accept just anyone who signs up. In fact, fewer than 50% of applicants make it through our screening process.
Each player goes through a qualification test to ensure they can follow instructions, think critically, and provide thoughtful feedback. They also need to be able to speak English clearly, use the device they’re claiming to own, and be in the location listed on their profile. Any VPN use results in an immediate, permanent ban to make sure you get the exact players you need.
Once they’re in, we keep a close eye on quality. In fact, a human reviews every single player video. That means watching for red flags like incomplete tests, careless answers, or misuse of the platform. Players who break the rules (like submitting fake responses, misrepresenting their location or experience, or skipping tasks) are removed permanently.
We also take fraud prevention seriously. It’s extremely difficult to game our system thanks to a mix of tooling, manual checks, and a dedicated community team that stays actively involved.
We pay fairly. No points, no delays, no nonsense
TRUE. One big reason our players show up and take your test seriously? They’re treated fairly.
We pay in actual money (not gift cards or rewards), sent via direct transfer. There’s no need to complete five tests to cash out, no minimum threshold to hit, no hoops to jump through.
Even better: players are paid whether or not they liked the game. They’re compensated for participating, not for being positive.
That fairness is intentional. We want their feedback to be honest, unbiased and representative of your real players. Otherwise it’s not useful!
Most players aren’t “professional testers”
TRUE. The people in our panel are players, not QA professionals or researchers. They’re the kind of people who download games for fun, get stuck on tutorials, and rage-quit sometimes. In other words, the same kinds of people who will play your game in the real world. In fact, many of our casual players don’t even identify as “gamers.”
Some of them have tested multiple games before—that just means they’re good at giving feedback. But most aren’t experts. They’re students, parents, casual gamers, genre superfans. And that diversity is what makes the feedback so useful.
Sometimes they get through mechanics quickly because your onboarding is solid. Sometimes they’re overwhelmingly positive because the game really is great. That’s a good thing!
PlaytestCloud only shows you the good feedback
FALSE. What you see in your dashboard are the complete, high-quality recordings. The ones where the player followed the instructions, recorded properly, and played as expected.
While a human reviews every single playtest recording, they’re just checking that it meets our quality standard and fulfills your request. We don’t delete bad feedback to make your game look good, or pick and choose which player videos to send. Not only would this not be helpful to making better games, it would also be a waste of money to pay players for videos that aren’t used!
If a video is missing, it’s usually because it was incomplete, corrupted, or didn’t meet basic quality standards (think: no audio, player gave up after 10 seconds, not understandable feedback). If our reviewers find a video doesn’t meet our standards, we replace it immediately. This is part of our 100% quality guarantee.
Bottom line: Good research starts with good humans
We know good player feedback doesn’t happen by accident. That’s why we:
- Carefully screen and qualify every player
- Monitor performance and remove low-quality testers
- Pay fairly and consistently
- Maintain active fraud prevention measures
- Match the right players to the right tests, not just whoever’s available
Even as the panel grows, our commitment to quality never changes.
So if you’ve ever found yourself wondering who these players really are, rest assured: they’re real, human, thoughtful gamers who just want to help make great games even better.
