2026 Schedule

PDT 08:00 – 13:00 | EDT 11:00 – 16:00

BST 16:00 – 21:00 | CEST 17:00 – 22:00

EEST 18:00 – 23:00 | IST 20:30 – 01:30

Select your timezone:

Wednesday 20 May 2026

15:00

Platform open

15:10

Game Quality Academy lounge

16:00

Welcome

Jimmy Bischoff, Head of Quality
Xbox Game Studios

16:05

Quality Checkpoint: making our conditions of success clear for our partners

Mathieu Turle
WWQC Operations Director
Ubisoft

Synopsis

As our QA&QC Teams were systematically facing the same difficulties from one project to another, we implemented a new ceremony – not only to make our partners acknowledge what is important for us, but also to create the opportunity to discuss about our conditions of success & raise the risks that we foresee. This presentation will be about how we get there, what we ended-up with, and some learnings about what works well & what doesn’t.

AI powered QA tool development

Chris Watkins
Co Owner and Principal QA Engineer
Punch Up Games

Synopsis

LLMs are built on piracy, but we can use them to make sweet QA tools. You know all those tools, scripts, helpful little things you want for testing that your support engineering team is never going to get around to building? Now you can build it yourself.
Stories of tool development and a hands-on walkthrough of using Claude Code. Doing it Live (probably)

When test cases aren’t enough: How quality leaders build trust in creative, global game teams in the AI era

Ritu Chowdhary
Director – Quality Control
Ubisoft Pune

Synopsis

Even the strongest test teams sometimes ship games that disappoint players.
This talk explores why games can be technically “working” and still fall short of player expectations and how testers and quality leaders can influence outcomes earlier by reframing risks, shaping product conversations, and helping teams focus on what truly matters for players.

16:45

Comfort break - 15 minutes

17:00

Risk-based QA strategy for live and R&D games

Derek Rakos
Director, QA
Riot Games

"Our Secret Sauce" - behaviour, codev and shift-left

Nazim Zahaf
Senior Development QA
Behaviour Interactive

Synopsis

This presentation aims at peeling back the curtain on some of Behaviour Interactive’s best kept secret; its internal strategy and application of QA as real force multiplier in a shift-left strategy.
Over the last 30 years, Behaviour has leveraged its expertise with multiple partners across a vast breadth of industries; however since 2019 our QA strategy has shifted to the left, bringing in QA earlier and giving them a voice in our client-partner interactions which as resulted in better games, better partnerships and better QAs.

17:40

Comfort break - 30 minutes

18:10

Communicating value through data driven storytelling

Ben Wibberley
Founder & Managing Partner
DAQA

Test plan evolution and optimizing test focus on Apex Legends

Eric Padilla
Senior Quality Designer
Respawn Entertainment (EA)

Synopsis

In Live Service games, test cases can quickly become unmanageable, making it hard to focus on what truly matters and what requires manual verification versus automated results. Discover how Apex Legends Quality Verification reduced manual testing by aligning the right level of certainty with the criticality of features and leveraging technology to expedite testing – all while maintaining expected release quality.

18:50

Comfort break - 15 minutes

19:05

Surviving the test of time: automation in Dead by Daylight

Rémi Veilleux
Senior Programming Technical Director
&
Jeremie Dakin-Perron
Senior Test Automation Specialist
Behaviour Interactive

Synopsis

Join us for a session on the automation strategies that helped Dead by Daylight grow into a top-performing live game. Learn how we scaled automated testing across platforms, improved quality and performance, and delivered strong ROI through greater efficiency.

See how performance dashboards and KPIs drive continuous improvement, how Unreal Build Graph simplified our build pipeline, and how Gauntlet and Data Validators enable comprehensive testing and early issue detection. We’ll also cover dedicated server performance KPIs, functional tests and smoke tests to help prevent regressions as the game continually expands.

Torque about data

Tim Marshall
Solutions Architect
Xbox Game Studios

Synopsis

Great testing outcomes need insightful data analytics: reliable telemetry, consistent definitions, and dashboards people actually use. Learn the production patterns we rely on—separating data from reports, shared templates and standards, source control, and AI-friendly structure—to keep quality reporting scalable and sustainable. All recommendations are grounded in real scenarios from Forza.

Quantifying the vibes: turning the nebulous into something tangible

Alex Smith
Quality Designer – LiveOps Lead The Sims 4
EA-Maxis

Synopsis

In a world driven by hard data, we in games QA face a unique challenge of trying to turn subjective statements like “Tighten up the graphics on level 3!” into something measurable for dev. Drop into this chat to explore some ways I’ve found success breaking down these vibes and turning out something quantifiably actionable.

19:45

Comfort break - 15 minutes

20:00

From prototype to production, machine learning at scale with nexus

Neilson Mackay
Group Technical Director
Electronic Arts

How to successfully create automation and actionable insights with limited support

Michael Leslie
Senior Quality Lead
&
Ryan Johnson
Quality Engineer
Xbox Game Studios

Synopsis

This session will cover some reasons why automation plans fail and how you might be able to use already existing game functionality to create Automation/Actionable Insights. Examples given of how this was done using 2 projects, 2 different automation types, and how it went from nothing to large scale coverage in phases.

20:40

Game Quality Awards

20:55

Closing remarks

21:00

After hours networking lounge

22:00

End of Day 1

Thursday 21 May 2026

15:00

Platform open

15:10

Game Quality Academy lounge

16:00

Welcome and day 1 highlights

16:10

Panel

AI in Game Testing

Rex Black
Independent
Andrew Fray, Automated AF

Panel

Value

Panelists to be announced

17:00

Comfort break - 15 minutes

17:15

Telemetry that works: lessons from across XGS

Chelsi Hohnbaum
Senior Solutions Architect
Xbox Game Studios

Synopsis

This talk shares hard‑won lessons from across Xbox Game Studios on what makes telemetry reliable, trustworthy, and genuinely useful over the life of a game. Attendees will learn how to avoid common pitfalls, align teams on intent, and take practical steps toward telemetry that supports quality, engineering, and informed decision‑making.

Principles of esports testing: designing for high level gameplay

Erika Lytle
QA Engineer
Riot Games

Synopsis

With the rising trend of players immediately pushing for competition and esports in every new multiplayer game, QA professionals and play-testers must understand the balance considerations critical to maintaining game health. Through the lens of Valorant, we’ll discuss key methods for designing an esports-level playtest and why it’s an essential tool for any live service or multiplayer game.

How to test your game on a budget: strategies, methods, and failures drawn from experience

Michael Debus
Senior QA Analyst
Independent

Synopsis

If you work in Quality Assurance at a small studio – or you’re part of a small studio without dedicated QA – this talk is for you. My goal is simple: share the mistakes I’ve made so you don’t have to repeat them.

I’ll walk through the strategies that actually worked for me while testing games on a tight budget (or no budget at all): hands-on matrices to track testing activities, lessons on return on investment when managing student testers, and pragmatic approaches to processes and automation.

17:55

Comfort break - 15 minutes

18:10

Rising through the ranks: anatomy of a quality lead

David Jenkins
Release Manager
Aonic Games / Megabit Publishing

Synopsis

Offering some practical advice on taking your first few steps into Game Quality leadership. This talk is aimed at those new to, or aspiring to, QA Lead and equivalent roles.

Automation against all odds

Miruna Bercaru
QA Producer
Funcom Games Bucharest

QA judgment in the age of AI

Derek Rakos
Director, QA
Riot Games

Synopsis

How AI changes QA decision-making, where it helps, where it fails, and why human accountability matters more, not less.

18:50

Comfort break - 15 minutes

19:05

The secret life of bugs

Dusty Levenberg
Accessibility Product Manager
Riot Games

Synopsis

Accessibility and usability walk into a tavern. The barkeep says, “Sorry, we only serve things players notice and rage-quit over.” Need another drink after that? Make sure you make it to Dusty’s Qualicon talk for more! (dad jokes included)

19:45

Comfort break - 15 minutes

20:00

A WoW QA tools quest: From monolith to SOA

Will Burton
Senior Software Engineer II – Quality
Blizzard Entertainment

Synopsis

This presentation tells the story of how the WoW QA Tools team evolved a core desktop tool, Quest, from a successful monolithic application into a service-oriented architecture (SOA) to improve scalability, developer velocity, and user experience.

Pause with purpose: a playbook for trust and strategic alignment

Hakim Ronaque
Senior Quality Lead
Xbox Game Studios

Synopsis

Often teams run fast yet rarely pause to think big. This session shows how to design intentional team sessions that strengthens relationships and clarifies strategy. You will learn a simple blueprint for shaping objectives, crafting an agenda that balances connection and decision making, and turning discussions into measurable commitments. We will cover facilitation tips, artifacts that bring alignment back to the day to day, and a follow up cadence that sustains momentum across vendors and partners.