Testing is critical in any form of web development, whether you’re developing a complex web app or a static website. For online casinos, the intricacies of dealing with games that hackers want to manipulate, as well as different payment options, give greater urgency to certain types of testing. Beyond that, every player wants a smooth and fun play experience.

For players to reap the benefits of a pristine end-product, a lot of planning and testing needs to be implemented prior to its launch, or, in layman’s terms before it ‘goes live’. When it comes to online casino software, there is a reason many providers choose to partner up with companies that solely specialize in software solutions. By using white-labeled casino software, providers can immediately provide tried and tested games to players rather than developing themselves.

But for other providers, it’s software development from the ground up, including full testing.

Who are they testing for?

While you might automatically think that online casinos need to test the software so the outcomes are expected and the casino can’t accidentally run out of money thanks to a game error, there is another important stakeholder here, too. Online casinos typically must have their games approved by a licensing authority so that they are licensed for operation, and players can trust the casino.

What this means is that the games themselves must comply with certain rules from the licensing authority. Building tests and cases around these rules is a must. For instance, the UK Gambling Commission outlines that “Random number generation and game results must be ‘acceptably random’,” which is typically through generally accepted randomization means.

Functional testing

Does the online casino app behave as it is supposed to? By deriving the functional tests from the requirements of the casino and games, the online casino provider can check that the software is behaving as expected. These types of tests should be composed when outlining the system itself, and with new tests added with each new module.

Mobile testing

While some online casinos are developed only for desktop computers and some are designed only for mobile devices, these days, casinos want to be available across devices. Testing across different devices and browsers to ensure the experience is as expected is a crucial component in development, and may also be a crucial design design in the beginning of the project.

Security testing

Online casinos need to ensure their applications are extremely secure to prevent the chance of outside influences being able to manipulate any details that would affect any game outcomes. Of course, none of the logic is present within client-side code, however, the server-side code needs to both be secure in itself and not at risk of any code injections from the client. Online casinos usually start by implementing OWASP Web Security Testing to ensure that their applications and websites are protected against the most well-known web vulnerabilities.

Performance testing

Online casinos must be able to perform correctly in times of extreme loading. If there are many incoming connections at once, then the games should still load and play smoothly, as expected. Performance testing under strenuous conditions is essential in ensuring that a casino is able to offer its services to players without interruption. At the same time, testing should encompass other performance conditions, such as how the casino responds when there is a network dropout.

A note on payments

Most online casinos use a third-party payment provider for all their monetary incoming and outgoing payments. The beauty of using these services is that they are accessed via plugins, so they have been thoroughly battle-tested in practice by the payments provider itself.

On gaming software

Many casino providers do not create or even serve the games that they offer through their websites. By white labeling or just offering direct connections to other software provider game catalogs, they are able to spin up online casino websites relatively quickly. When you think about it, all that’s typically offered besides collections of games on a page are some explanatory documents and perhaps a chat function. The more the website’s functionality is outsourced to third-party add-ons that are tried and tested, the faster it is to roll out a full online casino to players.

You might come across a few different online casinos that seem eerily similar. This is because the online casino provider has simply reskinned their offering multiple times to provide a different look and feel to attract different types of audiences. These type of casino providers will concentrate their testing on audience testing to see how the style of the website resonates with their particular given audience, similar to A/B testing of ads online.