Choosing the Right Test House: A Strategic Decision Most Studios Underestimate

When studios think about certification, the focus is usually immediate:

"How quickly can we get this game live, and how much will it cost us?"

So naturally, test house selection often comes down to four key factors:

• Reach – how many regulated markets can the lab cover

• Price – the cost per certification

• Speed – time to approval and responsiveness

• Quality of service – communication, consistency, and overall experience

On the surface, this feels like a straightforward operational decision.

In reality, it’s anything but.

The Hidden Lock-In Effect

One of the most overlooked dynamics in test house selection is what happens after your first certification.

When you baseline a game with a specific lab, you’re not just getting approval for one market, you’re setting the foundation for how that game expands into future jurisdictions.

Here’s the catch:

If you later decide to enter a market that your original lab doesn’t cover, you typically can’t transfer that certification at a reduced cost.

Instead, you’re looking at a full re-test, at full price, with a different lab.

Had that market been covered by your original test house, you likely could have leveraged a transfer of approval at a significantly lower cost.

That early decision? It compounds over time.

Test House Selection Is a Strategic Bet

This is where things get uncomfortable.

Choosing a test house isn’t just about your current launch pipeline, it’s a bet on:

• The markets you might enter over the next 2–3 years

• The evolution of your game portfolio

• Your distribution strategy across operators and aggregators

• How often you expect to re-certify, update, or localise content

And unless you’ve got perfect foresight (no one does), hindsight is inevitable.

Studios frequently optimise for short-term speed or cost, only to find themselves:

• Re-testing the same games multiple times

• Paying significantly more than expected over time

• Managing fragmented certification coverage across labs

  
  

The Operational Fallout: Where It Really Hurts

Cost is only part of the story.

The bigger issue is what this fragmentation does to your internal operations.

Once you’re working across multiple labs, jurisdictions, and game versions, tracking quickly becomes a serious challenge:

• Which game version was certified, and by whom?

• Which reports apply to which markets?

• What can be reused vs. what needs re-testing?

• When do certifications expire or require updates?

• What has already been paid for, and what hasn’t?

  
  

This information often lives across:

• Emails

• Spreadsheets

• Shared drives

• Project Management Tools

• Individual team knowledge

  
  

And that’s where risk creeps in.

Because at some point, someone will ask:

“Are we actually compliant in this market right now?”

And the answer won’t be immediate.

From Testing Decision to System Thinking

The studios that scale effectively tend to approach this differently.

They don’t treat test house selection as a one-off procurement decision.

They treat it as part of a broader compliance and operational system.

That means:

• Aligning test house strategy with market expansion plans

• Understanding the long-term cost implications, not just upfront pricing

• Structuring certification data in a way that’s searchable, traceable, and auditable

• Maintaining clear visibility across all assets, markets, and approvals

Because the real cost of certification isn’t just the test itself.

It’s everything that follows, financially and operationally.

Final Thought

There’s no perfect answer here.

Every studio is balancing speed, cost, and future flexibility with incomplete information.

But one thing is clear:

The earlier you treat test house selection as a strategic decision rather than a tactical one, the fewer surprises you’ll face down the line.

And in this space, surprises are rarely cheap.