Blitz turns to crowdsourcing for PC testing

Blitz 1UP has announced an innovative new plan for compatibility testing its PC games – get the audience to do it.

The label, which is dedicated to publishing titles by independent developers, doesn’t have the resources to test PC games on a wide variety of platforms – and so is signing up interested gamers, who’ll receive a copy of the game free of charge as a reward.

“It’s an area that can be pretty expensive if you pay for the good external companies to fully test your game on a wide range of hardware, and it doesn’t scale down in price just because you’re a small indie game," said Blitz 1UP producer Neil Holmes.

"Even though Blitz Games Studios is a 200+ strong company, our machines are all of a similar high spec so we can’t do much to help internally either. Crowdsourcing therefore makes perfect sense. We’ll be able to test on a huge and diverse range of hardware and software, which will lead to improved stability for our partners’ games. At the same time the hardcore indie fans will be receiving free copies of the games in return for their services, so everyone’s a winner.”