You play a video game that hasn’t been officially released yet, follow the instructions you’re given, then write about how the experience went, and you get paid for it, with no surveys and no apps downloaded just to check off one more task.
That’s the offer from GBTN, which stands for Global Beta Testing Network, as long as you get an invitation to test.
As a way to make some extra money, it’s hard to find anything more enjoyable than playing games. Enjoyable, yes, but is it also worth the time you put into it?
Below, I’ve laid out everything GBTN offers, with all the details, so you know exactly where the money comes from and how you get to it. With those details in front of you, you can judge for yourself whether to take it seriously or move on.
I’ll go through it piece by piece, starting with the invitation.
What is GBTN and how does it work?
On GBTN, you play video games from home before they hit the market, and after you try them, you say what you think of them and get paid for your opinion. You only get in, though, if you become one of their testers.
On the other side are the companies that make the games and want to know, before launch, how regular players respond to them. GBTN is where the two sides meet.
I like who’s behind the site, Keywords Studios, a huge company that provides services to the games industry worldwide and has helped developers on Fortnite, Call of Duty, and Baldur’s Gate 3.
The work comes in pieces. They contact you when they have a project for you, then another one, and so on, with no set schedule (not part-time, not full-time). It isn’t a job.
They do pay, because the games you test actually earn you money, so it’s a site you can trust. What it’s worth is a harder question. To answer it, I’m now looking at how you earn on GBTN, because that’s what decides how much time and work you put in.
Test unreleased games
The part about unreleased games, mentioned above, takes place in play sessions. You get a game that hasn’t reached the public yet, you try it on your platform, you do what you’re asked, and at the end you tell the people at GBTN what you think of it.
This also brings two requirements right from the start. Your English has to be fluent, otherwise they won’t accept you as a tester, and you have to be comfortable sharing your thoughts openly (not everyone feels at ease talking about what they think).
The rest is simple.
Session invites come every now and then, by email, so it’s a good idea to check your inbox often. They call you in for games on any platform, your phone included, but only for the ones you own, because you add your gaming platform profiles to your account and that’s where they see what you have.
You send your feedback at the end of each session, then GBTN reviews it and, once everything is in order, pays you the promised amount. I’ll tell you more about payments in the next section.
Only one thing can leave you unpaid. Each session comes with a task list and instructions that you read carefully before you start, because if you skip them or follow them only halfway, you get nothing. In that case, you’ve played for nothing. I think the rule is fair, even if it hurts after you’ve put your time into the game.
How do people get paid?
When you apply as a tester on GBTN, you also fill in your PayPal address. That account has to be verified, active, and registered to the same email you used to sign up on GBTN.
Other than that, the site says very little about money (it doesn’t say much about the game testing either), but PayPal seems to be the only payment method. You don’t get Amazon vouchers, Steam codes, or other digital gift cards for regular testing. GBTN isn’t one of the simple survey sites but a testing network run by Keywords Studios, and it only sends money, again through PayPal.
That works for me. PayPal is one of the easiest payment methods to use right now, so their payments are pretty convenient, at least based on what’s written on their site. If you want other sites that also pay through PayPal, I recommend Marketagent and InboxDollars (you can earn in several ways there, mainly with surveys).
A minimum withdrawal threshold? I don’t know if they have one. While I was trying out the site, they never called me in to test a game, and there was no way for me to get as far as a withdrawal. That part I can’t verify.
The only thing they state clearly is the payment timeframe. Officially, the money is released and sent 45 days after the date the entire project ends.
The project, not your own session.
If you join the test on the very first day of a beta that’s open for two weeks, the 45 days stay on hold until even the last day of those two weeks is over, and only then do they start running. All that time, you’re waiting for money you’ve already played for. The earlier you join the test, the longer you wait for your money.
How much money can you make?
As a tester at GBTN, you’re paid for the hours you spend playing and testing, not for each game you finish. A fixed annual salary, the kind full-time QA testers at big companies get, doesn’t exist here. Your hourly rate depends on the country you live in, and you don’t find out what it is until the welcome email (and only if they accept you). You won’t find any figure on the site for what a play session pays.
If you live in the US, you could get $13.00 to $18.27 for an hour of testing, and those are figures you can actually expect. In the UK or another European country, an hour pays around £10, or €12 (depending on where you are).
The hourly rate looks good. The invitations, though, you can count on one hand.
When I tried out the site, I saw how few chances to earn come up, and most active testers, the ones with modern hardware, get 1-3 test invitations a month, so the rest of the time you just wait. You can’t log in whenever you want and play as much as you like. You’re waiting on an email.
How much do you end up making in a month? That depends on how many invitations come your way and how many hours you get to work on each one. GBTN is a crowd-sourced network run by Keywords Studios, with testers drawn from the general public, and nobody there guarantees you any hours.
So even though the hourly pay is good, you won’t make a lot of money fast here. Personally, I’d treat it as a hobby that pays now and then, not as a steady income you rely on every month. Pocket money, not a paycheck.
What I liked about GBTN is something else. You play games that haven’t been released yet, and you can have a say in how they get improved. Few sites let you do that.
How do you ask for help?
If you want to get in touch with someone from support, the only way is the contact form on the site. It’s a simple form, and I think that with it the site does the minimum it owes its members, because it gives you an easy way to ask for help.
When you write in about a sign-up problem or an error in the portal, a reply from an actual person comes, on average, after 3 to 10 business days, because tens of thousands of people from all over the world sign up with them. That’s not a short wait. And if the portal error stops you from working, there’s nothing you can do in the meantime but wait.
A forgotten password doesn’t go through this queue. Account recovery is automatic. If you’ve lost your password (or your username), you request a PIN code from GBTN Portal Recovery Tools and get it right away by email.
There’s also nowhere to figure things out on your own before you write in. You find out very little about how you earn on the site, as I mentioned above, and there’s no FAQ page. I hope they at least add a Help or FAQ section, so you no longer have to contact support every time something is unclear.
GBTN Trustpilot
For a finished test, the money is paid through PayPal, but not until 45 days after the project ends. I found this confirmed both on independent blogs and on Facebook. That’s how focus groups work, although it isn’t easy to play now and wait until then to see the money, especially when you went in expecting an instant reward.
Alongside the wait, people also complain about the invitations. They come rarely and at irregular intervals, because you’re only brought in when your profile matches the players they’re looking for on a particular test (until then, the account doesn’t earn you a cent).
What reassures them is the company behind it. Keywords Studios is a reputable company, and GBTN does actually pay for tests done from home.
Beyond that, there isn’t really anywhere to find out more. I looked up playgbtn.com in the app stores, on Sitejabber and on Trustpilot, and it doesn’t have a profile on any of them. Reviews of Keywords Studios do exist, on Glassdoor and AmbitionBox, but they’re written by people employed there full-time as QA testers, not by members of the GBTN community, who only play when they get an invitation.
You can count the independent reviews on one hand. I didn’t see any signs that they’d been faked either, but there was no way for those signs to show up in places where almost nobody writes reviews. Nothing to fake, then.
Since it started in 2018 as a small recruiting and testing site, opinions about it have stayed about the same, and no major public controversy has stuck to its name.
Red Flags you should never ignore
When you create a tester account, you accept rules you can’t properly read anywhere. On portal.playgbtn.com, there are no written terms for people who test games, and what you find instead is a privacy policy written for recruitment, in other words, a text that’s hard to get through and doesn’t even say how the platform actually works.
That’s also where you sign an NDA, an agreement in which you promise not to talk about what you test. The company states on its homepage that if you don’t respect it, it can block your access or sue you. I don’t like an agreement with consequences that serious, signed under rules you can’t clearly see.
The money arrives no later than 45 days after the project ends. That’s a long wait. Still, slow payment doesn’t make the site a scam, and ScamAdviser and Scam-Detector, two automated scanners, give it a very good trust score.
The danger comes from people who use its name. In February 2024, a verified report appeared on BBB Scam Tracker about impostors posing as Keyword Studios who, from what it seems, are hooking people looking for a job (a friendly “recruiter,” an offer that sounds good). Before you send anything, check that you’re actually on playgbtn.com! Any address that only resembles it belongs to an impostor.
Who can use GBTN?
About 2 weeks after I sent in my application, I heard back from GBTN, and they say that’s the longest it can take. Before that, what matters is whether you meet their requirements:
- You have to be at least 18. There’s no parental consent option for minors, and anyone who lies about their age loses their account permanently, right when they add their payment method. The lie comes out right at the point where money is involved.
- You have to be able to handle very detailed, complicated instructions, all in English.
- You have to act professionally in live sessions, when you test the game together with other people.
- You can’t live in a country restricted by international banking laws or by PayPal: you can’t sign up from there, and you can’t receive payments either.
Otherwise, sign-up is open to anyone, from anywhere. Test invitations aren’t handed out as generously. About 90% of them go to the United States, Canada, the UK and Western Europe, because the companies publishing the games usually plan around servers and languages meant for specific regions, even though anyone else can apply.
Your computer also counts for a lot when it comes to invitations. You need an Intel i5 or Ryzen 5 processor (or better), with at least an NVIDIA RTX 3060 or AMD RX 6600 graphics card, and 16GB of RAM. Testers with integrated and older graphics cards write that invitations never came for them at all.
Once your application is accepted, you’re asked to sign an NDA (non-disclosure agreement). A screenshot sent to someone, a clip cut from gameplay, or a test session streamed on Discord for friends is enough for Keywords Studios to sue for damages, and then you also lose the money they haven’t paid you yet. All that, over a simple screenshot. That’s also why I don’t have more images in this review: some of them show confidential information.
Then you log in to your member account. Personally, I’d link my gaming accounts there right away, because GBTN looks at them when deciding which invitations to send you. From here on, all you have to do is wait.
Can you use it on your phone?
The member account works on a phone too. I logged in on mine and moved around the menus without getting lost once, with everything I looked for close at hand.
Money is a different story.
To earn, you need a computer or a gaming console. The only exception is an invitation to test a mobile game.
You won’t find an official GBTN app on Google Play, or on the App Store either. Anything that shows up under the name “GBTN App” and claims to be theirs is, most likely, a scam or a service that has nothing to do with them. I’d stay away from anything like that (no searching for it, no installing it).
The phone does have a role, though. Sometimes, GBTN asks members to take part in mobile game tests, and if you’ve marked in your profile that you’re willing to do them, you can expect to get an invitation too at some point.
The invitation depends on your phone, though, because the technical requirements are checked the moment you apply. On iPhone, you need at least iOS 15, with a strong preference for an iPhone 11 or newer models, which handle still-unfinished beta versions better. On Android, the minimum is version 12. With a budget phone that has a basic MediaTek processor, for example, your chances drop a lot, as their own data shows, because the automated invitation system almost always filters out phones that struggle with performance. I feel bad for people with lower-end phones, even if the reason makes sense.
The games haven’t come out yet, so they aren’t in app stores. On iPhone, you get them through TestFlight, a distribution tool for companies, and on Android through a direct, secure link where you download the APK file.
Is GBTN LEGIT or SCAM?
For anyone who wants to play games before they come out, GBTN is worth trying, and for that I recommend it wholeheartedly.
When it comes to money, at least, trust isn’t the issue. playgbtn.com is a game testing portal backed by a big company, something that’s been verified, and from what’s been paid out so far, you can see the money really does come through.
The problem is how long you wait for it. It takes 45 days for your payment to come in, and during that time there’s no support set up for people like us, the ones who just test, and there are no clearly written terms you can read beforehand either. The wait I can deal with. Rules I can’t find written in plain language, less so.
There’s also the sign-up (the application is long), so you’re already being patient before you get to the first game.
With the right expectations, I think it’s a site worth having. You won’t earn from it on a regular basis, even though the amount is a nice one when it does come. So I’d suggest it to people who are patient and want some extra money once in a while, who aren’t in a rush for rewards and aren’t looking for a community to get involved in.
For extra income, the truth is you’ll find better options. I’d go to the top 7 list of survey and GPT apps, because there every app gives you a good chance to earn, you get to a meaningful amount fast, and you always have something to do, which is also why the rewards come often.
Have you already played on GBTN, or do you have a question about it? Leave me a comment about what you’ve seen there. I’d love to hear from you!