Keywords Studios

Keywords Studios is the largest external services provider to the video-game industry. Game publishers and developers outsource huge amounts of non-core production to Keywords across the full game lifecycle: localization (translating games into dozens of languages) and localization QA, functional QA and game testing, audio and voice recording, game art and full co-development, player and customer support, community management, and marketing and trailers. Its clients include most of the largest publishers, such as Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, and Tencent, and its work has touched titles like Fortnite and League of Legends. The company was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, employing more than 13,000 people across 26 countries. Keywords was listed on the London Stock Exchange's AIM market (ticker KWS) for years before being taken private in November 2024 by the private-equity firm EQT, alongside CPP Investments and Temasek, in a deal valuing it at roughly $2.8B (£25.5 per share). Bertrand Bodson serves as CEO. For job seekers, Keywords is one of the biggest sources of remote and freelance work in gaming: game testers (functional and localization QA), translators and localizers, and player-support agents are hired in high volume across many countries.

Keywords hires two broad populations. (1) High-volume games-production and support roles, which is where most remote and freelance opportunities sit: game testers (functional QA and localization QA / LQA), translators and localization specialists (paid for language pairs), player-support and customer-experience agents, community moderators, and audio and art contributors. Many of these are entry-level-friendly (passion for games plus attention to detail and language skills matter more than a degree), and are hired per-project or as fixed-term or freelance contracts; remote availability and pay vary by country because Keywords runs delivery centers worldwide. (2) Corporate, technical, and studio roles: software and tools engineering, project and program management, studio leadership, business development, finance, and G&A, more often anchored to a studio location or hybrid. Application flow lives at keywordsstudios.com/careers (and its studio-brand career sites). For QA and localization roles, native or near-native fluency in the target language and a genuine understanding of games are the core requirements.