Forge Launches Playtester.gg, a First of its Kind Playtester Community and Marketplace
Forge’s Playtester.gg enables any indie game to connect with a global community of over 250,000 experienced playtesters, for free
SAN FRANCISCO – March 23, 2025 - Forge, the leading platform for community-driven game marketing has announced the launch of PLAYTESTER.GG, the first of its kind open community and marketplace for game developers and playtesters to matchmake based on their gaming credentials and collaborate to make the next hit Indie game. Forge’s mission is to help Indie game developers simplify the process of building, marketing, and distributing their Steam game.
Through its community of over 250,000 playtesters, Forge is accelerating the transformation of the global games industry where Indie game developers can easily tap into development and publishing capabilities previously only accessible to large studios.
“Playtesting is essential to the modern process of game development,” said Kun Gao, Founder and CEO of Forge. “We are making experienced playtesters accessible to all Indie game developers for the first time through PLAYTESTER.GG”
Inspired by a full year of meeting game partners around the world in 2025, the new PLAYTESTER.GG portal acts as a marketing engine and marketplace where both playtesters and game developers can collaborate with each other based on their interests, skills, taste and Forge-verified gaming credentials.
“We have witnessed first hand the power of enabling the global playtesting community,” said Horacio Nunez, Chief Operating Officer at Forge. “A twenty years old video game student from Argentina’s school UADE pinpointed the problem (and solution) to an onboarding problem plaguing the DAUs of a game developed in another continent in less than two hours of playtesting its Early Release on PLAYTESTER.GG”
Playtesters can join today at https://PLAYTESTER.GG to start building their gamer credentials and profile, as well as their weekly playtesting passport.
Game developers can go to https://FORGE.GG to tap into the playtest community and onboard to Forge’s suite of tools that help with playtesting, publishing, user acquisition, and more, for free.
About Forge
Since launching in late 2023, Forge has partnered with hundreds of games, helping studios boost discovery, retention, and engagement through more than 25 million completed quests. Now, with Forge GameLink, Forge provides a centralized hub for any game to connect purchase, content, community, and launch a direct-to-consumer experience within minutes.
Founded by gaming pioneer Dennis “Thresh” Fong, Crunchyroll founder Kun Gao, and Cyence founder George Ng, Forge originated as a project within GGWP, an AI-powered game moderation platform that the team launched in 2020, Forge’s mission is to make user acquisition and community engagement accessible and effective for all developers, enabling them to focus on creating amazing games.
The platform launched in late 2023 with an $11 million seed funding round, co-led by Makers Fund, BITKRAFT Ventures, and Animoca Brands. Forge’s existing investors include industry-leading strategics such as Griffin Gaming Partners, Riot Games, and Sony Innovation Fund. Forge’s angel investors include gaming industry leaders Riot Games founder Marc Merrill, Twitch founders Emmett Shear and Kevin Lin, TSM founder Dan Dinh, Kabam founders Kevin Chou and Holly Liu, YouTube founder Steve Chen, Krafton CEO CH Kim, former Discord CMO Eros Resmini (The Mini Fund), and ESL founder Ralf Reichart.
Contacts
For press inquiries:
press@forge.gg
