>>1336633They never let the software leave the office. I know some (not all, but most) do have in-house teams that test the game. Their paid temp positions in rooms specifically designed for testing. No cameras except the 20 on the ceiling, security and searches on entry and exit each day, no phones, no accessible data ports (if the computers themselves are even accessible, usually they're in another room), no internet, software itself locked down so you can't do so much as open a start menu.
Where I work, they have bathrooms and break rooms inside the security area past the checkpoint. People go in and they're stuck in that room for 8 hours because the more people come and go, the higher the security risk. It's still a very comfortable space, and the people have to sign a binder of paperwork authorizing all sorts of shit that a normal job would never require.
It's really about as you'd expect as far as security goes. And because of how controlled it all is, the QA teams are never as big as they need to be. Our room holds 36 stations, and we each game goes through about 4 sessions of QA for 1 week each. If it's an AAA title, we do 3x that amount, including 1 month before the game is already finished, so they can have those day-1 patches ready.
Still not enough, though. It's impossible to reasonably catch all bugs in games that are so complex. But some shit that companies pull is mind boggling because you KNOW that they knew about it.
