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How are internal audits of game studios
Intro: why the studio internal audit
Release speed, multi-jurisdiction and hundreds of integrations make the studio vulnerable to regulatory, technical and reputational risks. Internal Audit (IA) is a systematic cycle of checking the design of processes and evidence of their implementation. The goal is not to "catch the guilty," but to confirm that the studio is able to stably: release certified builds, protect data, honestly count money and respond promptly to incidents.
1) Audit triggers
Planned quarterly/semi-annual cycle.
Preparation for certification/entry into a new market.
Major incident: the fall of the stream/live studio, a bug in mathematics/payments.
Upgrade of RGS/core modules, infrastructure migration.
Mergers/acquisitions, connecting a new studio to the holding.
2) Team composition and roles
Internal Audit Lead: owner of the methodology, production independence.
Subject Matter Experts: mathematics/RNG, backend, front, DevOps/SRE, info base, QA, BI, finance, legal/compliance.
Process Owners: Area Managers (RGS, releases, live-ops).
Audit Analyst: collecting artifacts, sampling, sampling.
Observer/Shadow: representative of the partner/publisher (if provided by the NDA).
3) Scope of audit
1. Product and mathematics: GDD, pay tables, RTP profiles, simulations, RNG logic.
2. Code and assemblies: repositories, branching, review, dependency control, SBOM (component list).
3. Infrastructure: RGS, CI/CD, secrets, accesses, logs, observability (metrics/traces/logs).
4. Security and data: encryption, storage of personal/payment data, DLP.
5. QA and certification: test plans, reports, bug tracking, artifacts for laboratories.
6. Live-ops: incident-management, SLO/SLA, post-mortems, duty.
7. Finances and payouts: jackpots, tournaments, rev balls/royalties, affiliates, reconciliation.
8. Compliance/regulation: RTP corridors, feature limits, localization of rules, RG screens.
9. Vendors and IP: asset/font/audio licenses, contracts and usage rights.
10. Privacy/legal risks: politics, retention, user consent.
4) Artifacts that collect
Math: XLS/CSV simulations, seed files, RTP specifications, A/B reports.
Code/repo: PR history, code review protocols, SCA/SAST/DAST, SBOM reports.
CI/CD: pipelines, assembly logs, artifact signing policies, build storage.
Infra: Terraform/Ansible, network diagrams, access/role lists, keys with rotation.
Observability: Grafana/Prometheus dashboards, alerts, incident reports.
QA: checklists, test plan reports, device compatibility protocols, golden fleet of devices.
Finance: uploads of jackpots/tournaments, reports of rev balls, reconciliations with operators.
Compliance: matrix of jurisdictions (RTP/features/advertising), artifacts for laboratories, localization.
Legal: IP/font/music licenses, chain-of-title, NDA with contractors.
5) Method and sample
Risk-based approach: more depth where risk is high (payouts, RNG, secrets).
Sampling: representative PR/releases/incidents per period (e.g. 10% of releases, 100% of crete incidents).
Trace of end-to-end: from the requirement → the code → assemblies → a bilda → release → live metrics.
Comparison of fact and politics: are there discrepancies "as should be" vs "as really works."
Repeatability: step-by-step reproducibility of assembly and environment settings.
6) Audit test plans (sample structure)
1. RNG/Math:- Verification of seed generation and storage; lack of predictable patterns.
- Simulation/payout replay; RTP boundaries.
- Fail bonus/jackpot formulas on test pools.
- Lack of secrets in the repository; key rotation policy.
- SAST/SCA reports on crete dependencies; policy "no known critical vulns."
- Artifact signing, integrity control.
- SLO by uptime/latency; completeness of logs, retention.
- DR/backup-plan: recovery test, RPO/RTO.
- Isolation of environments (dev/stage/prod), least-privilege access.
- Completeness of test plans, device-coverage, crash-rate goals.
- Assembly purity (weight, first paint), regression automation.
- Certification checklist and laboratory comments.
- MTTA/MTTR, presence of post-mortems, execution of action items.
- Degradation/feilover procedures (for live games).
- Cadence of duty and escalation.
- Reconciliation of jackpot/tournament pools, correct distributions.
- Rev balls/royalties: formulas, conversion rates, delays.
- Audit trail (who/when changed configs).
- Rule/font localization, accessibility, RTL.
- Visibility of RG tools, correctness of texts.
- Data mapping: where PII, who has access, how much is stored.
7) Assessment and scale of "seriousness"
Critical: risk of loss of money/data, violation of law, compromise of RNG.
Major: significant process defect (no review, no alerts), but no direct damage.
Minor: local violations, documentation/outdated policies.
Observations: non-risk-bearing recommendations for improvement.
8) What is considered a "green zone" (basic KPIs)
Crash rate: ≤ 0.5% on "gold" devices; first paint ≤ 3-5 seconds (mobile).
RNG/mathematics: RTP deviations in tolerances; repeatability of simulations.
SLO: uptime live ≥ 99.9%, median latency within SLA.
Security: 0 crete vulnerabilities in the product; SBOM coating ≥ 95%; rotation of secrets ≤ 90 days.
CI/CD: 100% of builds signed; rollback ≤ 15 min; "four eyes" on the prod-deploy.
Incidents: MTTR ≤ target, 100% post-mortems with completed action items.
Finance: discrepancies in reconciliations ≤ 0.1%; Period-end closing ≤ X days
Compliance: 0 blocking comments of laboratories; an up-to-date matrix of jurisdictions.
9) Typical finds and how they are repaired
Secrets in code/CI: introduce secret-manager, scanners, rotation and pre-commit hooks.
Weak observability: add business metrics, traces, alerts with thresholds and duty.
Release bounce: fix release cadence, feature-flags, "release train."
Absence of SBOM: include generation in CI, blocking policy of crete versions.
RTP/geo config discrepancy: a single config register and version control are introduced.
Gaps in RG/localization: centralize texts, conduct linguistic audits, automatic checks.
10) How the results are drawn up
Executive Summary: key risks, trends, maturity map by domain.
Findings Log: a list of finds with seriousness, owner, deadline, links to evidence.
Corrective Action Plan (CAP): remediation plan, SLAs/milestones, check points.
Evidence Pack: artifacts (logs, screenshots, reports), access under NDA.
Follow-up schedule: checkpoint and re-audit dates.
11) Post-audit: implementing changes
Assign owners for each find; enter tasks into Jira/YouTrack.
Build checks into Definition of Done (DoD) and CI gates.
Update policies: accesses, releases, incidents, RG/localization.
Conduct team training (security, compliance, live-ops).
After 30-90 days - follow-up: verification of statuses and closure of "tails."
12) Internal Audit Readiness Checklist
- Up-to-date infrastructure diagrams and access/role register.
- SBOM and SAST/SCA/DAST reports on the latest releases.
- Release/Incident/Secret Policies; log of their application.
- Mathematical simulations/RTP profiles and QA reports.
- Rule/font localizations, RG screens, jurisdiction matrix.
- DR/backup plan and recovery test reports.
- SLO dashboards, reports on alerts and post-mortems.
- Register of IP licenses/assets, contracts with contractors.
- Financial reconciliations of pools/tournaments/royalties for the period.
13) Frequent studio errors
Audit = once a year "fear holiday." We need constant readiness: automate the collection of artifacts.
The focus is only on technical. Ignoring compliance, RG, localization and contracts leads to blockages.
Documentation "for show." The audit compares practice with policy: fixation in logs and tools is mandatory.
No patch owner. CAP without those responsible turns into an archive.
Over-scope. Trying to check everything at once is losing depth in risky areas.
14) Mature studio calendar (example)
Weekly: vulnerability scans, SBOM diff, alert checking and SLO.
Monthly: selective internal review of one domain (RNG/infra/QA).
Quarterly: mini-audit of the release circuit and live-ops; training DR.
Semi-annual: full internal audit + external pen tests.
Ad-hoc: after incidents/large migrations - focus audit.
Internal audit is a predictability discipline. It structures evidence that the studio manages risk, from math and code to payments, localization and live operations. When the audit is built into the routine (dashboards, policies, CAP, follow-up), the number of incidents and manual routines drops, external certifications and negotiations with operators/IP holders pass faster. As a result, everyone wins: the player gets a stable and honest product, the partner gets transparency, and the studio gets a stable release economy.