Gaming is a mass phenomenon and a billion-dollar market. The gaming industry is growing rapidly and becoming mainstream, with a spectrum ranging from complex PC and console games to fast-paced mobile games and virtual and augmented reality games. A look at the market figures also underscores this trend. In Germany alone, the games industry achieved record sales of around €9.97 billion in 2023. In the first half of 2025, a further €4.6 billion was already generated – a clear sign of how strongly the gaming business is booming.

As players' expectations for stability, performance, and user-friendliness increase, so does the pressure on development studios to bring flawless and compelling products to market. A botched launch can not only damage a company's reputation, but also result in direct losses in revenue.

Case Study: Cyberpunk 2077 – When a Launch Goes Wrong

Despite huge hype, the 2020 release ended in disaster. Cyberpunk 2077 is a prominent example of a failed game launch. The blockbuster, released at the end of 2020 amid enormous anticipation, suffered from massive technical problems on last-gen consoles – bugs, frame rate drops, and even warnings about epilepsy risks caused a storm of criticism. The consequences were drastic: Sony removed Cyberpunk 2077 from the PlayStation Store and offered full refunds to disappointed buyers. The share price of the responsible development studio, CD Projekt Red, subsequently plummeted by almost 30% at times. This case study impressively illustrates the risks associated with an insufficiently tested launch. This is where crowdtesting comes in: a flexible, scalable, and practical testing method that takes quality assurance to a new level.

Realistic Tests Instead of Limited In-House Analyses

Traditional in-house testing quickly reaches its limits in modern game development. Internal QA teams often test under laboratory conditions with limited resources – be it a restricted selection of devices or their own, operationally blind perspective. As a result, critical errors and usability issues sometimes remain undetected until the game reaches the end user. Crowdtesting closes this gap by testing under realistic conditions with real users. An external crowd of testers checks the game on a variety of devices, in different usage contexts, and provides unbiased feedback. This reveals flaws that would never have been noticed in-house. The testers act like real players, ensuring that the product works “in the wild.” The crowd's authentic test reports include detailed bug reports as well as UX observations and suggestions for improvement—added value that no lab test can offer to this extent.

Advantages of Crowdtesting over Purely Internal Testing: 

• Broad Coverage: A diverse community of testers with countless device configurations ensures that the game runs smoothly on almost all platforms.
• Authentic Feedback: Testers act like end customers and thus provide practical feedback on usability and gaming enjoyment.
• Rapid Scaling: Testing capacities can be flexibly scaled up and down. If necessary, dozens of testers can be made available at short notice, which is something that internal teams would struggle to achieve.
• Relief for Internal Resources: By outsourcing to the crowd, the core team can focus on development while the community thoroughly reviews the work.

Overcoming Specific Challenges in Mobile Gaming

Fragmentation: The mobile gaming landscape is extremely fragmented. Games must work on a huge variety of devices – from older budget smartphones to the latest high-end tablets, plus different operating system versions and display sizes. On Android alone, there are over 24,000 different device models in use, each with its own hardware characteristics and software configurations. In-house testers cannot possibly cover all these combinations. This is where crowdtesting comes into its own: msg.passbrains ensures optimal device coverage – up to 98% of all end device types worldwide. The crowd tests your game on various smartphones and tablets with different OS versions, networks, and language areas. This means that compatibility issues (such as crashes on certain models or display errors on unusual screen sizes) are identified and resolved before launch.

Retention and “whales”: In the highly competitive mobile gaming market, player retention determines success or failure. But the reality is sobering: after just one week, only about 10–15% of players remain active. There are many reasons for this churn—one of the most serious being technical problems. Mobile gamers do not forgive mistakes: A single crash, a lost game score, or a drop in performance can be enough to frustrate users into uninstalling the game. This is particularly dramatic when it comes to the so-called “whales” – the small group of top players who generate the majority of revenue through in-app purchases. Studies show that only ~1–2% of players (the whales) often generate 50–70% of a game's revenue. Losing even one of these big spenders due to bugs or poor user experience can cause enormous economic damage. Crowdtesting helps to eliminate such sources of error at an early stage. Extensive testing under real user conditions allows critical balancing issues, payment processing bugs, or social features that don't work properly to be identified before the public launch. This ensures that players experience a polished, mature game from the start—a crucial prerequisite for keeping them engaged and not losing long-term players and whales.

More than Alpha and Beta testing: Continuous Quality Assurance

Many studios traditionally rely on alpha and beta testing to gather feedback. In internal alpha testing, employees or selected internal users usually test a pre-release version. Beta testing then opens the game to a limited external player base – often loyal fans or pre-registrants – usually under strict NDA. This approach has its value, but it has its limitations. Beta testers are usually random end users from the target group who test the game as a hobby. Their feedback is valuable, but beta phases often last weeks or months, and community participation is voluntary, unstructured, and varies in quality. Important test cases can be overlooked because beta testers do not have a systematic testing mandate.

Crowdtesting complements and expands this model with a professionally managed testing phase: The crowd consists of trained testers who are specifically selected according to your criteria (e.g., devices, experience, demographics) and run through clear test scenarios in short cycles. Unlike free beta players, who primarily enjoy early access, crowd testers are compensated for their efforts and provide structured feedback. This allows for more in-depth and broader quality assurance, even alongside ongoing alpha/beta phases. Crowd tests can also be integrated parallel to development or iteratively throughout the entire project, not just at the end. This gives your team continuous, actionable feedback from the early prototype phase through to pre-launch – far more than a one-off beta round. This ongoing quality assurance allows errors to be detected early, when they are still cheap and easy to fix. In addition, the external perspective is maintained at all times, which protects internal testers from operational blindness.

Early Feedback Saves Costs and Ensures Quality

Quality assurance is not only a technical concern, but also an economic one. A bug that is only discovered after release in the live app can not only scare users away, but is also expensive—fixing it often requires emergency patches, support costs, and can cause damage to your image. Therefore, the rule of thumb is: the later a bug is discovered, the more expensive it is to fix. Studies show that debugging costs increase approximately tenfold with each phase of the development cycle. Crowdtesting counteracts this effect by enabling testing to be brought forward (“shift left” in the testing process). Instead of encountering problems only when the product is live, crowdtesting allows you to identify them early on in builds or during soft launches. Every bug that is fixed early on avoids high follow-up costs and protects against revenue losses due to player churn.

In addition to technical errors, the crowd also provides valuable UX feedback: How is the onboarding process going down? Are there any points of frustration in the gameplay? Such user perspectives help to optimize the gaming experience before market entry. This has direct financial benefits – better user guidance and bug-free gameplay increase the retention rate and lifetime value of players. msg.passbrains reports from projects that crowdtesting customers were able to iron out usability problems in good time and make the market launch smoother thanks to early feedback. In other words, investing in quality pays off. Early testing in the development process reduces the risk of costly re-engineering loops at the last minute and speeds up time-to-market overall. Development teams can respond iteratively to feedback and end up with a more robust product, which in turn minimizes expensive hotfixes after launch.

msg.passbrains – Your Strategic Partner for Games QA

In light of these challenges in mobile gaming, msg.passbrains offers its services as an experienced crowdtesting platform and QA partner that provides you with end-to-end support. Unlike anonymous mass testing, msg.passbrains focuses on strategic collaboration: you receive customized testing concepts that are tailored precisely to your game genre, target group, and quality objectives. As part of the msg group, msg.passbrains combines first-class test management with a global community of qualified testers. For you, this means access to an enormous variety of devices, operating systems, and user profiles without having to bear the administrative burden yourself.

An overview of the services provided by msg.passbrains:

Global Crowd Community: Access to test environments in all relevant markets and 98% of all device types—from the latest iPhone to niche Android devices. This covers even exotic device configurations that are not available in-house.

Experienced QA Experts: msg.passbrains combines a global crowd of real users with experienced test managers who control the process. These professionals (with industry and testing expertise) take care of test case design, test moderation, and validation of results.

End-to-End Managed Service: As a full-service provider, msg.passbrains takes care of everything—from recruiting suitable testing teams and executing test cases to analyzing and reporting the results. At the end, you receive a clear report with all findings, while we take care of the operational work.

Flexibility and Speed: Start testing whenever necessary. Whether it's short-term testing before a new app update or continuous regression testing during development, the crowd is available on demand. Thanks to the size of the community, tests can be carried out quickly even under time pressure, without compromising on quality.

Focus on the Games Industry: We understand the requirements of studios and publishers. Whether it's a casual app or a complex mid-core game, we know what matters when it comes to usability, monetization, and platform compliance. With msg.passbrains as your partner, you can establish a high QA standard that lives up to your brand's reputation and builds player trust.

With msg.passbrains, you don't just get a crowdtesting provider, you get an extension of your quality assurance team. We work closely with your developers and QA managers to ensure that crowdtests deliver exactly the insights you need to make informed product improvements. The result: higher game quality, more satisfied users, and sustainable market success. In a gaming industry where missteps are mercilessly punished, our crowdtesting gives you a decisive edge – both in terms of quality and economically. Trust msg.passbrains as your strategic partner to take your game's quality assurance to the next level and gain a competitive edge.

Conclusion

Crowdtesting with msg.passbrains seamlessly integrates realistic test scenarios into your development process. You overcome the limitations of internal testing, optimize specifically for the fragmented mobile world, and maximize player satisfaction and revenue potential. For gaming studios and mobile development teams, this means greater security and efficiency – from the alpha phase to long after launch. Especially in mobile gaming, where quality directly determines user retention and monetization, msg.passbrains provides reliable QA support to guarantee excellent gaming experiences. Rely on crowdtesting to boost quality and make your next game a lasting success.