How they fit together
Studio
Your studio is your workspace. It holds your team, billing, branding, and game settings. Your game’s name, platform, and genres live in the studio’s settings, alongside a URL slug that starts every link your players open. Set them once and every playtest, survey, waitlist, NDA, and key vault you publish picks them up.Studio settings
Your studio name, URL slug, and the settings every player link inherits.
Your game
Your game’s name, platform, genres, and the URL players join through.
Set up your studio
Playbook: get the studio, game, and branding right before you invite anyone.
Invite your team
Playbook: add teammates and pick the role each one needs.
Playtest
A playtest is a testing campaign that you create, configure, publish, and share with players. Every playtest has its own settings, player experience, and results. Playtests are modular. Enable only the features you need, such as player screening, NDAs, build and key distribution, gameplay recording, session objectives, and surveys. You can keep things simple or combine multiple features into a single playtest.Playtests
Every option available when you configure a playtest.
Playtest types
Single, multi, or longitudinal, and how many sessions each player runs.
Run a single session playtest
Playbook: one sitting, one survey, start to finish.
Launch a playtest
Playbook: preview, publish, share the link, announce it.
Submission
A submission is one player’s participation in one playtest. It rolls up everything that player did: every session they played, every survey they answered. If a multi-session playtest asks for three sessions, one player produces one submission holding three sessions.Submissions
What a submission holds and how far along each player is.
Work out what to fix next
Playbook: go from raw submissions to something your team can act on.
Session
A session is one playthrough. This is where your data comes from. Depending on what you switched on, a session can produce a video recording, an audio recording, a transcript, highlights, gameplay events, and survey answers. Recording is optional. A session still exists and still collects survey answers even when you never record anything.Sessions
Everything one playthrough can produce, and where to find it.
Gameplay recording
Screen and audio captured during a session, with the player’s permission.
Configure gameplay recording
Playbook: decide what gets captured before you publish.
Generate transcripts and highlights
Playbook: turn a recording into a searchable transcript and key moments.
Player and player group
A player is someone who joins your playtests, surveys, or waitlists, or signs one of your NDAs. A player group is simply a collection of players that you can organize and reuse across Userplay. Player groups can either be reusable studio-level rosters or automatically created for individual playtests, surveys, waitlists, and NDAs. They help you keep track of participants and manage who is taking part in each activity.Players
Everyone who has joined a playtest, survey, or waitlist, or signed an NDA.
Player groups
Reusable rosters and the groups created for you behind the scenes.
Build a group you can reuse
Playbook: grow a roster you can reuse across every playtest.
See what players own and play on Steam
Playbook: read what you know about a player before you invite them.
Survey
A survey is a standalone form that you can publish and share with players. Use it to collect feedback, ask questions, or gather player information outside of a playtest. Every survey has its own link, roster, and results. Unlike a playtest’s session survey, standalone surveys are independent and can be run on their own.Surveys
How a standalone survey is configured, published, and shared.
Run a survey
Playbook: write the questions, publish the link, read the answers.
Waitlist
A waitlist lets players register their interest before you’re ready to run a playtest. Use it to collect sign-ups, ask screening questions, and decide who should be invited when you’re ready. Every waitlist has its own link, roster, and results.Waitlists
How a waitlist collects sign-ups and who you invite from it.
Set up a waitlist
Playbook: line up interested players before the playtest exists.
NDA
An NDA puts an agreement in front of someone and records that they signed it. A playtest can carry one inline, before players reach the build. A standalone NDA is the same agreement as its own shareable link, for the times there is no playtest to hang it on: a press embargo, a publisher preview, a contractor. The agreement freezes the moment you publish. Every signature is stored with the exact wording it was made against, so a record of an agreement can never drift from what the person actually read. Every standalone NDA has its own link, roster, and signature ledger.Standalone NDAs
How an NDA collects signatures and what each one records.
The agreement
Write the terms and the checkboxes signers confirm.
Signatures
Who signed, when, and against which revision.
NDA on a playtest
The same agreement, inline in a playtest’s player flow.
Key vault
A key vault stores the game keys or access codes that you distribute to players. Key vaults can be used in two ways:- System vaults belong to a playtest and automatically distribute keys during the player experience.
- Custom vaults live at the studio level and can be shared with players using a standalone redeem link.
Key vaults
System vaults, custom vaults, and how each one hands out keys.
Keys
Add, import, and track the keys sitting inside a vault.
Stock a key vault
Playbook: load your keys and check you have enough for the run.
Give keys away with a redeem link
Playbook: share keys on their own, with no playtest attached.
How publishing works
Every playtest starts as a draft. Once you’re ready, publish it to make it available to players. You can unpublish it at any time and republish it later if needed.
A playtest can move freely between the Published and Unpublished states, but it cannot return to Draft once it has been published.
Surveys, waitlists, standalone NDAs, and custom key vaults follow the same publishing model.
Publish a playtest
What publishing checks for, and what it reserves.
Unpublish a playtest
Take it offline without losing anything you already collected.
Check what a playtest will cost
Playbook: size a run so you reserve the right number of sessions.
Take a playtest offline
Playbook: pause a live playtest and bring it back later.
Next steps
Quickstart
Turn this vocabulary into a working playtest in about fifteen minutes.
Playbooks
Sequenced walkthroughs for the job you are actually trying to do.
Player experience
The other side: what a player sees after they open your link.
Roles and permissions
Who on your team can do what.