Square Enix Wants to Use Generative AI to Do 70% of Its QA and Debugging by the end of 2027 - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 06 November 2025 / 2,877 Views
Square Enix has partnered with Matsuo-Iwasawa Laboratory at the University of Tokyo with the goal to improve the "efficiency of game development processes through AI technologies."
The goal of the partnership is for Square Enix to "automate 70% of QA and debugging tasks in game development by the end of 2027."
The project is titled "Joint Development of Game QA Automation Technology Using Generative AI" and has "a joint research team of more than ten members" that includes researchers from the University of Tokyo and engineers from the Square Enix group.
Square Enix by using generative AI will "aim to improve the efficiency of QA operations and establish a competitive advantage in game development."
The use of AI in gaming and other industries has been a hot topic. The use of it in QA could lead to people getting laid off and potentially missing bugs and other issues spotted by humans.
Thanks, VideoGamesChronicle.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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QA and Debugging actually makes a lot of sense for AI...
Doesn't mean this is a good idea.
Or maybe it's the best application for AI yet? This is the kind of stuff it would actually be good for and make an impact in development times and costs.
Depending on the training data and how it reports errors this could legimately work and find more bugs than humans could. Just depends how many instances they are willing to run at a single time.
Doesn't make it a good idea. All these advancements in AI will cause even more job losses, widening the wealth gap even further, to the point where companies won't even have enough people supporting them because they'll be too poor. AI will be the death of society one way or another.
Jobs aren't static. If you asked people what they expected the most common jobs to be today they wouldn't be able to tell you. Jobs change with technology, and AI will also change what kinds of jobs are in demand. It's possible that there will be a shift to the trades, allowing to meet with new demand. It's possible entirely new jobs will be created, I don't know and you don't know either. Besides, there's so much riding on AI now that you would cause a major recession if everyone agreed not to use AI. There could definitely be more regulations around AI, but getting rid of it completely would just cause stagnation
Better than AI nuking us. The Terminator was a warning.
Get ready for even buggier games to start coming out, all just in order to lay off more people.
All these generative AI servers need to be reduced to burning scrap.
eh, AI does have potential to greatly reduce menial labors, and thereby better optimize game development. The lower risk these games become, the more varied games will be. I wouldn’t be so quick to jump to the conclusion of “AI = evil and bad!”
You obviously don't know about the teen who killed himself because an AI chatbot told him to.
And people have been clubbed to death with golf clubs.
These are just tools. Their employment is what determines their impact.
Nothing good is coming from the advancement of AI.
I’m curious: If it weren’t for AI, then how would offline MarioKart Grand Prix be possible? Would you want there to be a full time staff at Nintendo HQ committed to filling those jobs that AI “stole” from them (i.e. have a team of gamers at Nintendo playing every Grand Prix)?
(This is more of a funny example lol. But point still stands that AI does have potential for good, even in game development.)
Well then what about all the jobs stolen by AI? People in those jobs may not be able to find work anywhere else, and even if they did AI could steal even more jobs.
what jobs? The hypothetical job of having a mass team of people playing MarioKart at Nintsndo HQ?
I meant QA and debugging.
Not really, it has its uses. It's ignorant to say otherwise.
You mean AI? Then yes, it has uses, but I fail to see uses for it other than make "art" for lazy wannabe artists, cheat at school projects, or likely very soon cause a nuclear holocaust.
AI will probably do a better job
Sounds kind of realistic, since it's 'only' 70%. Much of it will probably be fairly routine work, leaving the trickier parts to people. If it's routine work, AI shouldn't do too poorly either, although obviously there are still concerns regarding the quality of AI QA (which is pretty ironic).
Really it's part of a brainless and heartless plan to cut even more jobs so that some overpaid CEO can have a golden toilet. That's AI in a nutshell.
Yeah, well, that's how things improve, or most of us would still be farmers, doing some heavy work. Change can be painful, but it also has to happen. I have many concerns regarding AI, but jobs are only a minor concern to me. Obviously we should also somehow ensure the welfare of those that lose their jobs due to AI.
Well then have fun when AI nukes us after it's incorporated into the US military.
Did you not read a word of what I said?
Yes, and it makes me sick to my stomach. Jobs are not a MINOR CONCERN, especially with the global economy being in tatters.
Dude. There will be new jobs. It's in no one's interests to have a large population that's unhappy and could cause unrest. What other impact AI might have is a much greater concern than jobs.
What new jobs? Prepping shelters for when Skynet happens for real? Because that's where AI is pushing us.
Well, if Skynet ever becomes a thing, will you care about jobs? No, you won't. That's exactly my point, although I don't consider Skynet a likely result.
You clearly don't see the problem with putting AI in charge of whether someone lives or dies.
You have clearly not even tried to understand my position, because what you just said is 100% incorrect.
lol, maybe ya need a history lesson. Cutting jobs to overpay execs is literally not how things have ever improved. In fact every time that happens it's the opposite - things get worse. World is getting into a bad state partially because exactly this has become the norm. A symptom of late stage capitalism in which technology is used to just ferry more money to the wealthy rather than expand the economy, heck even when a company does poorly they just fire people and pay the execs even more or give them a golden parachute.
Improvements come from innovations that create new products and industries and opportunities. AI just replaces workers in the industries that already exist, and the only new products being built are AI tools to make this happen faster and more widely.
I don't know where this leads, but the direction of the path looks very negative and the only people who will reap the rewards are the execs and the already wealthy investors. This isn't an instance of a new technology replacing an old technology and thereby opening up new industries while letting old industries die. AI is a new technology replacing workers and offering nothing in return.
The way I see it is that AI will free up workforce for other things, and that freed-up workforce will also include people that will set up new businesses, including innovations. Of course it's not that simple, but like I said, it's in everyone's interests to not have a huge populace that's willing up to stir up unrest because they're so poor. I'm sure even the wealthy can see the issue, and they will also see the available workforce and figure out ways to put them to productive use.
I think we have a similar view of the problems there are, and I think something should be done about it. Complaining about AI taking over jobs isn't it though, because it's just one face of a much greater problem. AI taking over jobs shouldn't be a problem. Instead, society should be organized in a way where we can welcome this development with open arms.
Well society sure as hell isn't going to be organized in such a way, so no, there won't be new jobs that the workforce is "freed up" to do. A populace willing to stir up unrest because they're so poor will happen because of AI taking jobs. This is like the dawn of the French Revolution, just with different technology, and likely even more bloodshed because of advancements in weaponry. I hope you're happy when the poor rise up to raise hell, because you have the same attitude as Satya Nadella and other greedy CEOs who advocate for advancements in AI.
And your solution is slapping bandaid on the symptom and pretending others won't take advantage of that. The likes of China will utilize AI, and they will do it while keeping the populace happy enough, and if we don't stay competitive, we'll be poor anyway - only in the long run and very deeply instead of the short run. You just can't have your cake and eat it too, you have to pick one. If we don't have AI, even at the risk of losing jobs, we need an alternative to stay competitive. AI isn't the issue, distribution of wealth is.
AI will cause an even bigger wealth gap by taking jobs.
Sure, whatever floats your boat.
I know what I'm talking about.
Genuinely curious what this means. How does generative AI do QA?
By taking away work from actual HUMAN QA testers.
To be fair, AI might have a better eye at looking for bugs and fixing them.
I am so glad I'm about 90% finished with amassing retro consoles and games. With AI jumping into the picture, it seems like the writing on the wall has just gone HD... ultra HD.
As someone who works on automated testing, the AI testing will take care of 90% of the most bog-standard regression testing aka, check if the latest change hasn't broken an existing code. If you think that there's some kind of superintelligence that will discover the most shiny-Pokémon bugs, I have some bad news for you. This isn't super new or even that "existing", if you know how it actually works.
As if QA was the problem in their games....
What are they, fucking stupid?
No. Far from it. They are evil.
That too.
