Nobody Passes on the First Try
Platform Certification, Explained by Someone Who’s Done It For More Than a Decade
Platform certification. For a lot of indie devs, the phrase sits somewhere between “thing I’ve heard of” and “thing I’ll figure out when I have to.”
The problem with that second one: by the time you have to figure it out, you’re already behind.
In April, Trystan McCourt came to OGDA and spent an hour making the whole thing significantly less intimidating. He’s QA Lead on Subnautica 2 at Unknown Worlds, been doing this since 2014, and has certified more products across more platforms than he’d probably prefer to count. He built his slide deck specifically as a reference document — something you’d have open when you’re actually going through the process, not something that sits in a folder and collects dust.
Start Thinking About It Now
Immediately, actually. That was Trystan’s direct answer to the question of when devs should start thinking about cert. Not at submission. Not a month before launch. When you’re designing features.
That sounds early. It is early. It’s also correct.
The reasoning: certain categories of features are heavily regulated by cert. Commerce (anything you’re selling in-game, or outside the game). Multiplayer. Cross-platform play. User-generated content of any kind, including text chat and voice. Brand assets — how you refer to controller buttons, what you call the platform’s input devices, which trademark symbols you use.
PC and mobile are genuinely easier. Steam has roughly four cert requirements total. Pass your initial submission, and you essentially never have to do it again. Console is a different situation entirely. Every update you ship on a console platform goes back through cert. Which is part of why most practical cert knowledge skews console, and why the investment in getting it right early pays off across the entire lifecycle of the product.
"Building those systems without cert requirements in mind and then retrofitting later is significantly harder than designing with them in mind from the start."
Everybody Fails Their First Submission
Trystan was direct: everyone does. Not most people. Everyone.
The math that follows: plan for two full cert cycles before your target launch date. If your longest platform estimates a two-week review, submit at least four weeks out. That’s the minimum. More buffer is always better. Nobody has ever regretted extra time.
Some platforms surface failure notifications as they come in during the review, so a release manager can pull those bugs and start fixing them before the cycle ends. Others deliver a full report at the end. Either way, you go in knowing it’ll take more than one try and build your schedule to match.
The number that crystallized this for the room: XR001. The Xbox title stability requirement. Deliberately vague. Also responsible for 38 percent of all Xbox cert failures. Translated: don’t submit with crashes. A crash fails XR001 every time without exception. Bugs might get through. Crashes will not.
Spirit vs. Letter
This framework was worth showing up for on its own.
Some requirements are enforced literally. Brand guidelines are always in this category. Always. No platform owner will waive a brand guidelines failure. That one isn’t even worth asking about — fix it and move on. (It’s “Joy-Con,” not “Joy-Con controller.” Get the terminology sheet, share it with your localization team, done.)
Other requirements are enforced based on their underlying intent, not their exact wording. This matters because technically meeting every word of a requirement doesn’t guarantee you’ll pass if the cert team determines the goal wasn’t met.
In Trystan’s experience, PlayStation tends to enforce to the letter — once you understand what a requirement means, you can feel reasonably confident about whether you’ll pass. Microsoft has historically been more spirit-based, which makes those evaluations fuzzier. Both of those tendencies shift over time as people and policies change.
The practical move: read the test cases, not just the requirements. The test cases show you exactly what the cert team will run. That’s your window into what they’re actually checking, and it’s usually clearer than the requirement text itself.
Your Platform Rep Is a Resource
Once you have a developer account, you’ll have a rep at each platform. They have a lot of developers to manage. They’re still there to help.
Build a decent working relationship with them. Mostly this just means don’t be rude. Trystan mentioned this with some emphasis, which suggests it’s a more common issue than it should be. A rep you’ve treated well can expedite a hot fix review when you’re under pressure, help clarify ambiguous requirements, and connect you with things like themed sale opportunities. On Steam too, not just console.
It’s the kind of thing that pays off when you least expect it and most need it.
The Short List
Things worth knowing before you submit:
- Start at design time. Commerce, multiplayer, cross-platform, UGC, brand assets — all heavily cert-regulated. Build with that in mind.
- Plan for two cert cycles, minimum. Two times your longest platform estimate. More is better.
- Crashes always fail. No argument, no waiver. Fix the crash.
- Read the test cases, not just the requirements. The test cases tell you what cert testers will actually run.
- Brand guidelines are never waived. Get the terminology sheet. Share it with localization. Then don’t think about it again.
- Don’t use cert as your testing process. Cert is not qualitative. It confirms whether you’re following the rules, not whether the game is good. Test first.
- Ask early for permanent waivers. If a cert requirement conflicts with a core design decision, ask as soon as you know. You might be told no, and you need time to respond to that before it becomes a launch crisis.
Career potiential?
One thing Trystan mentioned almost in passing.
That particular skill has outsized market value in a job market that hasn’t been gentle. For anyone in the room thinking about career development alongside project development, that was something to sit with.
"One of the biggest resume differentiators was console certification experience. He believes that background has helped him stand out from other QA candidates, especially in a field where a lot of resumes can start to look pretty similar."
Trystan has shared his slide deck from this presentation, and his reference document will be available to OGDA Associate members through the upcoming OGDA member portal. For anyone working toward a console release, it’s worth having open and if you have question feel free to reach out to OGDA’s Expert in Residence.
What’s next?
Our May 7th talk is already in the works. Morgan Long from Sad Panda Studios will be joining us to talk about Monetization. Come find us.
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