Arts Europe has moved its full sweep QA testing to Romania

JUNE 1, 2010 • It took a severe transit strike in Bucharest to bring to light that Electronic Arts Europe has moved its full sweep QA testing to Romania. All EA Europe titles must go through Romania before they are released.  The strike kept testers from getting to work, and added a slight delay to the release of a patch for Battlefield: Bad Company 2 PC.

Impact: Amazingly, Romania has become the connected capital of Eastern Europe. A lot of the credit goes to the country’s up to date and blazingly fast broadband connections. DFC has noticed a disproportionate amount of consumer online activity coming from Romania. Of course, in addition to a solid technology infrastructure, another factor are the lower wages to be paid there. Combined, this makes Romania very attractive to publishers operating in Europe. The extension on that trend is QA today, level development tomorrow. This is more than a job outsourcing phenomenon. As more creative talent gets seasoned, we expect to see a rise in independent studios and home-grown publishers there – especially in the F2P arena.