by Unclefragger » 05.05.12
tbh with people willing to give away tons of private information and/or even money to become beta testers these days I'm not even sure if the companies still pay dedicated testers.
Game testing is imho one of the weak spots in modern game development, there used to be payed testers then they started to select volunteers according to their skills, these days closed beta invites for big titles are random and thus more and more less qualified (and less interested in doing their job) people test the games, giving minimal to unqualified or even no feedback at all. But volunteers are cheaper then employees, rolling the virtual dice is cheaper then selecting them by hand.
There might still be some dedicated game testers out there but I think they are either still in their jobs from the old days or that one cousin that didn't manage to succeed in what ever line of work he chose ;)
"Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live."
- Martin Golding