You're about to give an external QA firm access to your latest build. It's pre-release. The build contains unannounced features. You've had them sign an NDA.
Now ask yourself: what does that NDA actually prevent?
The answer is nothing. It creates a legal remedy after something goes wrong. It does not stop a contractor from forwarding a build link. It does not expire their access when the engagement ends. An NDA is a paper control. What you need is a technical one.
Secure build distribution for game studios is about designing a platform where people can only access what they need, where that access disappears the moment the engagement ends, and where everything in between is logged.
Why access control is the real foundation of trust
A permission model where each partner, contractor, or team member is scoped to the exact environments and products they need — and nothing else.
When someone joins your co-dev pipeline, they shouldn't see your full product suite. When the engagement ends, their access should disappear in one action — not a ticket to IT, not a multi-step manual process.
Solsta's org-level admin panel gives admins control over exactly this. You assign roles — Admin, Viewer, Invite — per team or per user, scoped to specific environments and products. A QA partner sees the QA builds for the title they're working on. The platform enforces it automatically.
That's not trust as a gesture. That's trust as a system property.
The infrastructure reality: distributed pipelines are now standard
Modern game development doesn't happen in one building. According to JetBrains' 2026 CI/CD report, GitHub Actions now holds 33% of the CI/CD market. Jenkins still accounts for approximately 28% — a legacy footprint that predates modern external partner access requirements.
Many studios are running build infrastructure designed when everyone was in the same office over the past decade. The security model hasn't caught up to how teams actually work now.
Solsta plugs into your existing pipeline — Jenkins, TeamCity, GitHub Actions, GitLab — without replacing it. One of the largest objections we heard from studios was "we already have a system" but Solsta doesn't replace the pipeline, we fit right in. The CI/CD system keeps doing what it does. Solsta handles delivery, access control, and audit logging on the other side of the artifact.
What scoped access actually means
Giving a co-dev studio access to your builds is not a binary. The real question is: access to what, specifically?
- This team can see builds for Project A, QA environment only
- This contractor can download from staging, not production
- This publisher contact gets Viewer access — read only, no new pulls without approval
Solsta's RBAC model is built around this. Admin manages users and environments. Viewer gives read-only visibility for publishers or producers. Invite lets admins bring in new members with scoped access from the start.
Audit trails: accountability without friction
A permission system tells you what people are allowed to do. An audit trail tells you what they actually did.
Every build access event in Solsta is logged — who accessed what, from which environment, at what time. SOC 2 and ISO 27001 compliance are built in. AES-256 encryption handles data at rest and in transit. Token-based auth ties identity to access events.
If you need to answer who had access to a specific build during the two weeks before launch, the audit log gives you that answer without a forensic investigation.
Partners work better when they're not fighting the system
Solsta's delta distribution reduces data transfer by 85–90% compared to pushing full build artifacts. A QA partner in a different country isn't waiting hours for a full build. They get what changed. Access is scoped, delivery is fast, and the friction is gone.
The platform is engine-agnostic — Unity, Unreal, Godot, custom engines. It delivers to the right people, in the right environment, at the speed the project needs.
The conditions for trust
Studios that have made this work — Halo Studios, Focus Entertainment, Escape Velocity — aren't doing anything exotic. They're using a platform that gives everyone exactly what they need, with a clear record of what happened, and the ability to close access the moment it's no longer needed.
The NDA is still there. But the real work is done by the permission system. Secure build distribution is what makes co-dev partnerships functional at scale.
Frequently asked questions
What is secure build distribution for game studios?
Secure build distribution is the practice of delivering game builds to internal and external partners through a controlled, authenticated platform — rather than shared drives, email, or unmanaged download links. It includes RBAC, encrypted transfer, and audit logging.
How do game studios control access for external partners?
The standard approach is role-based access control scoped to specific environments and products. Studios assign a role — Viewer, Admin, or Invite — limited to the titles and environments relevant to that partner's work.
What permissions should a co-dev studio have on a build platform?
A co-dev studio should have the minimum permissions needed — typically Viewer or limited download access scoped to specific environments. Not admin access, not access to other projects. Access should be revoked as soon as the engagement ends.
How do you revoke build access for contractors?
On a platform with proper access control, revoking a contractor's access is a single action in the org admin panel. The access is removed immediately — no manual cleanup across multiple tools required.
What is role-based access control in game development?
RBAC in game development means assigning permissions based on a user's function, scoped to the products and environments they need. A QA lead gets QA environments. A publisher gets read-only visibility. RBAC ensures no one has more access than their role requires.
