We’re proud to share that we have been shortlisted alongside many of our fantastic partners for the Develop:Star Awards 2026. It’s the collective effort of our global teams that gets these games ready for players, and we’re delighted to have the opportunity to celebrate the journey to getting there!
AUDIO INNOVATION OF THE YEAR
At Side, we approach every project with innovation in mind, always asking the question – how can we help talent land the best performance while our engineers capture the strongest sound? Integrating a simple yet effective trick of the trade was key to getting accurate voice capture of each of the 98 dinosaur names mentioned in Jurassic World Evolution 3. While we are all relatively familiar with Tyrannosaurus Rex, Quetzalcoatlus isn’t in everyone’s day-to-day vocabulary.
That’s where Side’s “Hablo Dino” system came in. To ensure production deadlines were adhered to, we needed to ensure that actors could hit their lines as they would for every other game, and needing to break character to amend pronunciation risked damaging the narrative strength of the script and eating into precious recording time.
The Hablo Dino feeder stream utilized Side’s studio system to play back the correct pronunciation of all 98 dinosaurs mentioned in the game directly into the actors’ headphones before they delivered the line. The same system was also used to ensure that the island locations were pronounced correctly.
SUPPORTING STAR
Supporting Star is the dream award for any external developer, so we’re very proud to be shortlisted. It’s a moment for our teams to celebrate a huge amount of exceptional work delivered to our clients:
- Side Codev completed 40 projects in 2025 vs. 11 in 2024, including the award-winning Risk of Rain 2’s latest DLC.
- Our Localization teams took on 87 language pairs and 50 million words were translated for 104 unique clients; with the total number of projects completed exceeding 1700. Our Localization QA teams were equally busy, logging over 480,000 hours of LQA work across over 300 projects.
- Side QA maintained a 98% acceptance rate across 191 submissions in 2025, tested 312 titles, and launched AI-powered QA playtesting in partnership with Razer.
- On Player Support, we grew our agent headcount from 600 to 800, increased our customer satisfaction score from 2024 by 4% (from 76% satisfied to an even more impressive 80% satisfied) and logged 100,000 additional hours compared to last year (1.1M in 2024 to 1.2M in 2025).
Finally, a huge congratulations to the Frontier team for Jurassic World Evolution 3 and Sandfall Interactive for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, on a host of nominations including Best Audio and Best Game. Thank you for choosing us to support you with your projects!