Jumbo Jelly

QA hours calculator: how many testing hours your launch needs

Pick the milestone, your genre and the hours of content in the build. The calculator scales a base estimate by the genre’s median bug mention rate from the Steam Launch Bug Index (October 2026 edition, 592 games) and tells you whether that is a Smoke Test, a Health Check or more.

Genre medians from the October 2026 edition of the Steam Launch Bug Index (September 2026 releases).

A demo is usually 0.5 to 2 hours; an Early Access build 4 to 15; a 1.0 whatever a player needs to finish it.



Estimated testing hours

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See the Launch Health Check What this costs

Editorial estimate by JJ, not a quote. It scales a base number of hours per milestone by content length, genre risk from the index, multiplayer, languages and Steam Deck. Your build may need less or more; the call is free.

How the estimate works

  1. Base hours per milestone: 12 for a Next Fest demo, 6 for a patch, 40 for an Early Access launch, 80 for 1.0 or a major update. These are editorial estimates by JJ, the same ones used in Game QA cost in 2026.
  2. Content: each hour of content in the build adds 2 hours for a demo or 1.0, 1.5 for Early Access, 0.5 for a patch (regression on changed areas only).
  3. Genre risk: the genre’s median share of first-14-day reviews mentioning a bug, divided by the overall median (6.5%), clamped to 0.7–1.5. Data: Steam launches in numbers.
  4. Multipliers: +25% for online multiplayer, +15% for Steam Deck, +10% for full controller support, +10% per extra language up to +50%.
  5. Range: 80% to 125% of the result, because the same genre hides very different builds.

The result is an estimate, not a quote. On a 30-minute call we look at the actual build and say what we would test first; the fixed prices do not change after booking.