PlaytestCloud scales research incentives and cuts costs with Tremendous
"The fact that we were able to take out our old system that cost us more money and put a new one in that offered our research participants more reward options that better suit their needs — it was a no-brainer to switch to Tremendous."
Highlights
PlaytestCloud is a remote user testing platform serving game studios with UX feedback from over 1.5 million global players.
The team needed a better way to scale participant incentives without sacrificing speed, flexibility, or internal resources.
With Tremendous, PlaytestCloud cut costs, expanded global reach, and maintained an excellent player experience.
Today, the company processes thousands of payouts monthly with fewer operational issues — and saves time with Tremendous to handle player support.
Challenge
PlaytestCloud is a remote Player Insights Platform™ for the games industry. It helps studios run research by connecting them with real players who test mobile, PC, and console games from home. With a panel of more than 1.5 million players across the globe, PlaytestCloud supports thousands of studies every year.
To maintain research integrity and deliver high-quality insights, PlaytestCloud prioritizes fast, fair, and meaningful compensation. Players are paid in real money with no waiting periods, no points system, and no extra steps to cash out.
PayPal had been their primary payout method for their testers for 7 years, valued for its flexibility and global reach.
But as the company scaled, managing global payments through their previous system grew increasingly difficult, and it became clear the platform couldn’t keep up with their needs.
High fees that didn’t scale
As the volume of studies kept increasing, so did the cost of rewarding participants. “There were a lot of fees involved,” says Jack Dunne, VP of Research Operations at PlaytestCloud. “That’s when we started looking around for other options.”
Payment failures and operational friction
Beyond the cost, PlaytestCloud struggled with recurring operational issues that disrupted payment delivery. “We kept running into problems with rejected payments,” Jack explains. These failures created support tickets, delayed rewards, and introduced unnecessary friction into a core operational workflow.
Lack of customer support
When issues came up, the team had little recourse. “They wouldn’t provide any human support to our team,” Jack says. Without access to real customer service or transparency into why transactions failed, PlaytestCloud couldn’t troubleshoot problems, which put their ability to pay players in a reliable, timely manner at risk.
Participants still wanted PayPal
Even as the team looked for alternatives, they knew they couldn’t compromise on the player experience. “One of the key things we didn’t want to lose was the ability to pay people through PayPal, because we knew many preferred that option,” says Jack. Any new solution had to preserve flexibility and choice.
Solution
When PlaytestCloud began its search for a better incentive platform, they weren’t just looking for lower fees — they needed a solution that could scale with their growing volume of studies, reduce internal overhead, and maintain a great experience for their players.
Tremendous was the clear choice for their team.
Tremendous was kind of the perfect fit for us. We were quickly able to set everything up through the API, we have all of the different redemption options, and we’re able to pay people in more countries.
Jack Dunne
VP of Research Operations at PlaytestCloud
Tremendous also stood out for its fast implementation, fraud monitoring tools, and flexible payout options to support a wide range of participant preferences. Within days, PlaytestCloud was up and running, with no disruptions to their existing payout workflow and immediate improvements in speed, support, and scale.
Tremendous benefits for PlaytestCloud
Cut costs while preserving player choice
Tremendous helped PlaytestCloud cut out unnecessary fees without limiting payout options. “The 4% PayPal fee just didn’t make sense for us as a business,” Jack says. But because many testers prefer PayPal, the team still wanted to offer it as an incentive option. Tremendous allowed the company to pass on fees to participants when needed and offer flexible, fee-free alternatives like prepaid Visa and Amazon gift cards, saving money while giving participants more choices.
Reduce internal support and development overhead
Switching to Tremendous saved the team time on two fronts: setup and ongoing support.
“It didn’t break anything to move to Tremendous, and only took a day or two in terms of dev time,” Jack notes. The switch was simple enough that his team’s internal documentation didn’t need updating.
Once live, Tremendous also took on the support burden. “If a reward somehow doesn’t work, my staff doesn’t have to deal with it anymore. Tremendous takes care of it for us.”
Expand global reach
Before, PlaytestCloud couldn’t reliably send rewards to participants outside a limited set of countries. Tremendous opened the door to a more global and diverse tester base. “We functionally can pay people all around the world now,” says Jack.
Bolster fraud prevention with built-in tools
Participant fraud is a growing challenge for all research teams. In addition to PlaytestCloud’s existing internal fraud prevention methods, Tremendous’ built-in fraud prevention tools helped surface suspicious payout activity.
“Even before the fraud features were live, Tremendous reporting helped us flag if something looked fishy,” says Jack.
With these checks in place, Jack and his team can ensure their incentive budget goes toward rewarding real players who provide real value to their customers.
Strengthen tester trust with fast, flexible payouts
Player experience is core to PlaytestCloud’s business, and fast, reliable payment is a big part of that.
“We pay people out within 24 hours of completing a test,” Jack says. “If we don’t uphold that SLA with players, our reputation goes in the bin.”
Tremendous makes it easy to deliver on that promise. They receive redemption links instantly, and they can choose their preferred payout method with no delays, no point systems, and no confusion.
Impact
Since switching to Tremendous, PlaytestCloud has been able to automate and scale its incentive process without sacrificing quality, speed, or player experience. What was once a time-consuming and failure-prone process now runs smoothly in the background.
“Being able to handle all of the rewards we do automatically, with no human intervention — it’s unbelievable,” says Jack. “Everything just works and doesn’t cause us any stress. We couldn’t do what we’re doing at this scale without Tremendous.”
In the past year alone, PlaytestCloud ran over 5,400 research studies through its platform, each one requiring fast, reliable payouts to players around the world. Tremendous made it possible to meet that demand while reducing operational overhead and minimizing payment-related issues.
Jack estimates that his team has seen significant cost savings by reducing transaction fees, minimizing fraud-related losses, and streamlining their payout process. With fewer support tickets, fewer delays, and more options for players, Tremendous has helped PlaytestCloud deliver a smoother experience while freeing up staff time for more strategic work.
Ready to compensate participants with less hassle? Learn how Tremendous simplifies payouts for UX research teams.
"We’re super happy with basically everything. Tremendous is the only piece of enterprise software I ever recommend to people in the research space. I tell them, you should be doing this through Tremendous because it’s easier, it’s faster, and it’s cheaper."
Gaming
40
28 countries
Pay Pal, Gift Cards