Steam To Include Built-In Beta Testing For Games

Beta testing for games will be taking a new turn as Steam is introducing a built-in beta testing feature. Previously, developers had to hand out individual Steam keys to interested testers, but it could oftentimes be a hassle. With Steam's integration of built-in beta testing within the app, it should alleviate the troubles that developers have to go through during the beta testing phase. The new beta testing feature will allow interested users to sign up directly on the game's Steam page.

The beta testing feature is called Playtest and it was first revealed by Steam Database creator Pavel "xPaw" Djundik, who tweeted the screenshot of the feature. The screenshot shows that Total War: Elysium now has a closed beta testing feature.

The option is available just underneath that "add to your wishlist" button. Requesting access for beta testing changes the text to "you have requested access" and the description reads, "keep an eye out for an email notification from Steam when the developer is ready to accept more participants."

However, it seems that Total War: Elysium is no longer accepting beta testers at the moment.

It's also quite interesting to see that Steam has introduced this feature without making any noise about it. Previously, Valve has been quite vocal about announcements and rolling out new features via Steam Labs like Play Next, News Hub, and Interactive Recommender. It seems that Playtest is a more developer-oriented feature than an end user-oriented one. Nonetheless, it was bound to be noticed sooner or later.

It'll be quite interesting to see how this feature pans out over the coming months. It may even turn into a new norm for beta testing games. Even though we know that Total War: Elysium does have the beta testing request access, we encourage you to check out other games' pages and look for the button. Nevertheless, we do hope to see this feature soon become common across Steam.