Compatibility Testing for PC Games: A Full Guide

What is Compatibility Testing of PC Games?

Compatibility testing, at its core, is a type of non-functional testing conducted to ensure that your apps or games are capable of running on different environments. This includes but is not limited to different hardware configurations & operating systems, different types of screen monitors, as well as various software applications, different network environments, different terminals, different languages, and so on.

When it comes to the compatibility testing of PC games, its scope usually narrows down to the following 3 types:

1. Hardware Compatibility: This involves testing the game on different hardware configurations. It includes different types of processors (CPU), graphics processing units (GPU), memory (RAM), hard disk capacities, and screen resolutions. The objective is to ensure that your game performs optimally across all these different setups.

2. Software Compatibility: This involves testing your game over different operating systems (like Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, Windows 11, etc.), and antivirus software, input methods, and DirectX versions. The goal is to guarantee that your game runs smoothly, regardless of the software environment.

3. Language Compatibility: Apart from English, your game may have players from different regions who speak Chinese, Japanese, French, Spanish, and other different languages. Testing your game in various languages ensures that all text in the game is correctly displayed and understandable to players, regardless of their language.

Note: For games that run on other devices or platforms, they also need to do console devices, or other kinds of compatibility testing. For example, players nowadays expect games to be released on their preferred platforms. It's not uncommon to see players criticize a game on social media if it fails to launch on their devices during a global release. As a result, developers need to ensure that their game is compatible not only with PCs, but also with devices like PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch.

And, if your game runs on a browser, you will need to test it across different browsers (like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc.) and even different browser versions.

Why Compatibility Testing of PC Games?

Good compatibility testing helps you REACH MORE USERS.

For developers, it's essential to ensure that your PC games can have a good performance on all popular terminals. Bad compatibility will cause direct harm to user experience and potential loss of players.

That's why it's crucial to conduct compatibility tests on various PC devices. By doing so, you can identify issues and bugs early on and fix them promptly. At the end of the day, it leads to heightened customer satisfaction, broader market penetration, and an expanded user base.

However, it could be highly challenging if you choose to do it within your own team:

1. Unable to guarantee full coverage: with so many and diverse device brands, OS versions, and PC screens on the market, it‘s challenging to guarantee that the game product is compatible with most PC devices.

2. Lack of professional QA testers: this slows down the testing process, results in uncomprehensive compatibility testing, and hinders the launch of your product.

3. High costs to get expert testers: Hiring a seasoned tester can be very expensive! Balancing the cost of expert testers with the need for thorough testing might give you a headache.

4. High costs in equipment purchase, updates & maintenance: Ensuring compatibility requires a substantial investment in acquiring various devices, keeping them up-to-date, and maintaining them in optimal condition. This can drain your resources and budget.

How to do it efficiently?

With a decade of experience in game testing, in our team, we can do PC game compatibility testing covering mainstream PC devices, which help us discover bugs and problems to ensure a smooth gaming experience for players.

Testing Solution
We test core scenarios of games, including download, installation, launch, core operations, and uninstallation, etc. Our testing focuses on hardware (CPU, GPU, screens) and software (OS, antivirus, input methods, DX) compatibility issues.

PC Benchmark
To help customers optimize device configuration, we have crafted a PC benchmark functions based on the latest market data.

1. Main Functions

• Comprehensively analyze PC gaming device trends across 6 critical dimensions

• Capture multidimensional device information from 3 key lists: TOP → GPU, Latest Released GPU, and Recent Hot GPU

• Data is updated monthly to ensure timely insights into the latest trends in PC gaming devices.

2. Scenarios

• Select and configure testing devices for compatibility testing. Formulate a selection strategy in terms of specific testing objectives, leveraging the authoritative data to devise the optimal strategy.

• Acquire knowledge of the screen resolutions to refine game visualization performance and compatibility.

• Game enterprises can precisely assess common device configurations and operating systems, facilitating to make tailored corporation positions and marketing strategies to expand their user base.

You can learn it here →: PC Specification Benchmark

Key Points for PC Games Compatibility Testing

1. Comprehensive scenario coverage: It needs to cover whole-life gaming scenarios, including but not limited to: installation, launch, login, character creation, tutorials, store, events, combat, and uninstallation, etc.

2. Covers mainstream devices: Needs to have various devices available to guarantee needs of most players. For reference, we conduct compatibility testing across 10+ dimensions, covering 80% of GPUs used by Steam users, mainstream CPUs including Intel and AMD.

We actually have a list for our supported PCs →：here

1. Quickly detect compatibility issues：Long testing time can drain your resources and budget! Need to make the process simple and quick.

1. Efficient delivery of professional report：Need to customize software and hardware compatibility solutions tailored to Clients, and efficient delivery. Every game has different bugs and issues.

Read the original blog →: Here

About WeTest

WeTest, with over a decade of experience in quality management, is an integrated quality cloud platform dedicated to establishing global quality standards and enhancing product quality. As a member of the IEEE-approved Global Game Quality Assurance Working Group, it is recognized for its commitment to quality assurance. WeTest has served over 10,000 enterprise clients across 140+ countries.

Focusing on advanced testing tools development, WeTest integrates AI technology to launch professional game testing tools such as PerfDog, CrashSight, and UDT, aiding over a million developers worldwide in boosting efficiency. Additionally, WeTest offers comprehensive testing service solutions for mobile, PC, and console games, covering compatibility, security, functionality, localization testing and other various services, ensuring product quality for over 1,000 game companies globally.

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