Creator Spotlight : Valérie Bélanger - QA Specialist

First, tell us a little bit about your journey as a game developer and how you came to be working on Hell is Us as a QA specialist?

I grew up with a controller in my hands; video games have always been an integral part of my life and daily routine — bugs included. When I was younger, a technical issue in Wind Waker prevented me from finishing the game.

My professional journey started with specialized training as a game tester, where I learned the trade directly from industry professionals. I then built my experience in FQA (Functional QA) for several years, working my way up to Senior level. While looking for a new challenge, I was recommended Rogue Factor, and that's where I made the leap into Dev QA.

Moving into Dev QA was a revelation: as a QA Specialist on Hell is Us, I'm now embedded at the heart of the creative process. This new perspective strengthened my commitment to putting user experience at the center of everything I do. For me, QA has become a personal mission: I want to spare our community the frustrations I experienced in the past. Today, I use that experience to anticipate obstacles and ensure our players enjoy total immersion.

Can you take us through a typical day at work?

My day is a balance of structure, exploration, and collaboration. I dedicate a large part of my time to designing and executing detailed test plans for new features. However, I always leave room for ad hoc testing: it's by letting my curiosity run free and trying unlikely scenarios that I uncover the most complex bugs.

A key part of my daily routine is also regular communication — whether in meetings or through messaging — with developers. These direct exchanges help ensure that technical information and priorities are properly conveyed, keeping the feedback loop fast and effective.

There are a lot of misconceptions about how it is to work in QA; which ones do you have to debunk the most often?

People often think we're paid "just to play games." In reality, we are the bridge between the final product and the players. We're on the front lines, ensuring the complete stability of the game throughout its entire development.

That requires immense discipline, as well as solid technical knowledge. You need to understand the mechanics to properly test each feature, and especially to differentiate between types of issues:

• A bug is generally a logical error in the code, or a feature that doesn't meet its requirements.

• A glitch, on the other hand, is often an unpredictable visual or audio anomaly. It can be caused by software, but also by hardware. A well-known example is the GoldenEye 007 bug on the N64: by slightly nudging the cartridge in the console, you could trigger glitches where NPCs would spasm uncontrollably.

This distinction is crucial for prioritizing fixes. That said, we have to stay realistic: even with the most rigorous testing, a game will never be perfect. Bugs can always slip through due to limited resources or production constraints — our role is to minimize those risks as much as possible.

Hell is Us is a multiplatform game; what were the biggest challenges that emerge from developing multiple versions of the game?

The main challenge is delivering an equal experience regardless of the platform. A player on a home console should feel the same immersion and fluidity as a player on a high-end PC. That requires rigorous validation on several fronts:

Technical