What can a portfolio prove about an outsourcing studio, and what can it not?
A portfolio proves that work of a certain standard left the building. It does not prove who made it, whether that person still works there, how many revision rounds it took, or whether it shipped on time. Ask which pieces come from titles that actually released, which named artists or engineers produced them, and whether those people are free for your dates. Then ask for the source files behind one piece: naming conventions, layer structure and mesh topology tell you more about the pipeline you are about to inherit than any render does. A showreel is a marketing asset. A project file is evidence.
How do you check a game studio's legal entity and headcount?
Ask for the registered company name, the country of incorporation and the registration number, then look the entity up in that country's companies register, which is public in most jurisdictions. That tells you when the company was formed and whether its filings are current. Compare it with the studio's own claims and its public headcount. A mismatch is not automatically a problem, because many studios contract through a holding company or a separate entity per country, but you want the contract signed by an entity with a trading history rather than one registered last quarter. Confirm which entity actually employs the people who will do your work.
What should a paid pilot with an outsourcing studio cover?
A pilot should be real production work you would have to do anyway, not a test brief. Give it two to four weeks, a defined deliverable, the brief format you plan to use later, and the people you were promised for the full contract. Judge four things: how quickly questions come back, whether they are good questions, whether the second revision is clearly better than the first, and whether files arrive in your naming convention without being asked twice. Pay the normal rate for it. A studio that only performs on unpaid tests is telling you how it prices attention.
What should you ask on a reference call about an outsourcing studio?
Ask for two references who worked with the same team leads you have been offered, and try to include one project that was cancelled or descoped, because that is where behaviour shows. Useful questions: what went wrong and how it was handled, whether the people in the pitch stayed on the project, how change requests were priced once work started, how long a typical answer took, and whether they would hire the studio again for a different discipline. A reference who can only speak in generalities either did not work closely with the studio or is not free to speak plainly.
What are the red flags in a game outsourcing proposal?
The reliable red flags are structural rather than stylistic. A quote with no line items, so you cannot see what drives the price. No named staff, or resources listed instead of people. Revision rounds left unspecified. Silence on who owns the IP and the source files. A start date that assumes you sign this week. A discount offered before you asked for one. And a scope written in adjectives, such as polished or AAA-quality, instead of countable deliverables. None of these prove a studio is bad. Each one is a decision the studio has left open that you will pay to close later.
What does the "Studio-confirmed" mark on this directory mean?
It means this directory's scanner found the listing's badge live on the studio's own website. That proves exactly one thing: the people who control that domain manage the listing here, since nobody can put the badge on a website they do not run. It is not an audit, not a quality certification, and it cannot be bought. It moves no ranking. A listing without it is not suspect, because most studios have simply never embedded their badge. Treat it as evidence that someone at the studio stands behind the profile, and run every other check yourself.
