“AI is an accelerant; it’s not the answer.” Testronic’s new chief shares her vision for the game services firm

Within the game services space, there has been a huge deal of consolidation.

Many of the giants in this field offer absolutely everything you can think of if you are building up to release your next hit – from quality assurance and localisation all the way through to marketing, PR, and even audio design.

But in the eyes of new Testronic CEO Sharon Baylay-Bell – a corporate veteran who has worked everywhere from Microsoft to the BBC to Ted Baker – there is no harm in focusing on a handful of areas and doing them well.

In the past, the company has made its fair share of acquisitions. It has moved into new markets, and was until recently part of the Catalis Group of companies (a brand which has been retired now with the sale of Curve Games to India’s Nazara).

But under Baylay-Bell’s stewardship, the plan appears to be to keep things simple. The company is focusing on what it calls its ‘Centres of Excellence’: its three core testing and localisation centres in the US (New Orleans), Poland (Warsaw) and the Philippines (Manila), rather than a huge network of offices around the globe.

“One of the things I always do when I work with businesses, whether that’s as an exec chair or as a CEO, is to challenge the organisation to answer the question: ‘What do you want to be famous for?’,” she says.

“A lot of organisations become lost along the way. Acquisitions do that. But for us, it’s quite simple. It’s quality assured. That’s what we’re here for. That’s what we’re here to deliver on. That single-minded focus will ensure that we never lose sight of what it is that we’re delivering for our customers, and importantly, what we’re delivering for the players.”

Testronic recently attracted investment from TDC. Although the amount of funding has not been disclosed, the company has described it as “significant.” Baylay-Bell says that this money is being put into augmenting the infrastructure that the testing giant already has under its belt.

“For us, it’s meaningful in the sense that we have moved very quickly from the date the deal was finalised (July 4) to hiring over 160 people and to have committed to take a doubling of the space in the global testing floor we have in Manila,” she explains.

“It’s allowed us to immediately unlock some of the more senior hires that we have made, as well as add to our testing capability. It’s also meant that we’ve been able to make improvements in the office environments in both Warsaw and for New Orleans. It’s a meaningful amount of financial support.”

Restructuring

Alongside news that it had attracted this new funding and was restructuring, Testronic also confirmed that it was closing its studios in Madrid and Belgrade. A spokesperson for the company confirmed to Game Developer that 4.8% of its total workforce was impacted by this decision.

Speaking about Madrid, Baylay-Bell says that it was a combination of contracts winding up, the influence of AI, and property costs that factored into this decision.

“We have really had to think deeply about some parts of the organisation that aren’t as successful as they have been in the past,” she says. “One of the reasons why we made the decision to close our Madrid studio for the 2D and the co-dev work was that part of the business has been totally disintermediated by AI. It’s not in a phase of growth at all.

“Additionally, we have a very heavily weighted property portfolio in Europe – if something happens with a landlord, they want to take the lease back or whatever it may be, you do have to think quite carefully and quickly about what the right next decision is.

“In the 2D and the co-dev area of the business, all of our customers were either coming to the end of their projects or we’ve managed to sustain those relationships and the work is being delivered out of Manila, which is now the Centre of Excellence for that type of work.”

Acquisition pause

In the past, one of the ways Testronic has grown has been through M&A activity. Despite the recent influx of money, the company is not looking to buy up other outfits, but rather is seeking alternative ways to grow. One reason for this is that Baylay-Bell says finding companies with the right cultural fit is a challenge; the other is that she simply doesn’t see any firms that would be “particularly additive” to what Testronic is doing already.

“We’re not [looking at M&A] at the moment, no,” Baylay-Bell says. “We are pretty happy with the shape of the organisation. Rather than acquiring businesses, I’m currently more interested in acquiring intellectual capital.

“I am hiring a number of individuals that I believe will really add value to the customer experience. A chief technology officer is high on my list. We want to really think deeply about the technology offering that we can develop for our customers, as in how we deliver great testing feedback and input into their organisations and their dev teams to make the products better, and you get them shipped out to the players in as good a state as possible.”

“Localisation and language will benefit from AI, but AI doesn’t do emotion”

Sharon Baylay-Bell, Testronic

One of the areas that Baylay-Bell wants the to-be-hired chief technology officer to look at is AI. Despite already having some AI in place at Testronic, the chief executive does not think this is a magic bullet for growth.

“My general perspective on the AI question is that it certainly has its place, but it’s not in and of itself an answer,” Baylay-Bell says. “There are still plenty of opportunities for the human element to be the single biggest differentiator of the value that customers receive.

“AI is an accelerant; it’s not the answer. Localisation and language will benefit from AI, but AI doesn’t do emotion, it doesn’t do tone, it doesn’t do cultural colloquialisms or adaptation. As a result, you sometimes end up with an outcome that often has more problems.

“There needs to be more of that human visibility and competency to make sure that culturally sensitive materials are localised properly.”

Bounceback

Talking about the game plan, Baylay-Bell mentions that she knows that demand for Testronic’s services will be increasing in 2026. This, people within the industry are saying, might be when the market will start to show signs of recovery. But as you might recall, a lot of ink was spilt in 2024 about “survive to ’25” – that next year was going to be when the layoffs and studio closures ended, and when things started to look more positive.

As you might also recall, that hasn’t exactly come to pass.

But when it comes to expecting an increase in demand in 2026, Baylay-Bell says that it might not be the bounceback that people expect.

“There’s a real clarity with the studios about what they’ve got coming up, and when it’s coming out,” she says.

“I don’t know that a bounceback as described is necessarily what’s coming. What I would actually say is that the fruits of the labour of what all of these studios have been investing in over the last few years are going to start to find their way into the hands of the testers to get them ready to get out into the hands of the players.

“There’s more than enough investment going into those global studios for the industry to be reasonably successful. I do think there will be industry consolidation, and I do think that there will be a polarisation, particularly of testing organisations, as some of the economic headwinds that we’re seeing coming out of North America, generally start to take a toll.”

She continues: “One observation I would also have is that I don’t think we’ve seen the wealth of opportunity that’s coming out of Asia and, in particular, the Middle East yet. I do firmly believe that there’s a huge amount of talented people at work in both of those geographies.

“For us, Manila is at a real apex. It can deliver both in a European and US time zone, but it’s at the apex of Asia. That’s particularly interesting for us as well, as we start to open up work with some of those AAA global companies out of their Asian offices. We’re starting to make some real traction and headwind there.”

Looking to the future, Baylay-Bell has big plans for Testronic. The aim isn’t necessarily to be the biggest quality assurance company in the world, but its new chief executive wants it to be the number one choice in its field. “I dream big,” she says. “Testronic will be the number one global leader in quality assurance testing within the next five years. When I say number one, I don’t necessarily mean in terms of size, but it will be number one in terms of quality and competency.

“Customers will choose to come to Testronic because that’s the most important thing and they know that we will deliver for them every time. The clue is in the name. We are an assurance provider.”