Some testers use the job as a stepping stone in the game industry. QA résumés, which display non-technical skill sets, tend towards management, then to marketing or production.[citation needed] Applicants for programming, art, or design positions need to demonstrate technical skills in these areas.

Game testing personal are usually paid hourly (around US$10–12 an hour). Testing management is usually more lucrative, and requires experience and college education. An annual survey found that testers earn an average of $39k annually. Testers with less than three years experience earn an average of US$25k while testers with over three years experience earn US$43k. Testing leads, with over six years experience, earn on an average of US$71k a year.

Some employers offer bonuses for the number of bugs found.

A typical bug report progression of testing process is seen below:

There is no industry standard method for game testing, and most methodologies are developed by individual video game developers and publishers. Methodologies are continuously refined and may differ for different types of games (for example, the methodology for testing a MMORPG will be different from testing a casual game). Many methods, such as unit testing, are borrowed directly from general software testing techniques. Outlined below are the most important methodologies, specific to video games.

For consoles, the majority of testing is not performed on a normal system or consumer unit. Special test equipment is provided to developers and publishers. The most significant tools are the test or debug kits, and the dev kits. The main difference between from consumer units is the ability to load games from a burned disc or from a hard drive, as well as being able to set the console for any publishing region. This allows game developers to produce copies for testing. This functionality is not present in consumer units to combat software piracy and grey-market imports.[citation needed]