How do I create a closed beta on the App Store?

Question

After months of hard work, much to my surprise I'm about to unlock the "feature complete" and "production ready" achievements with the game I'm working on, so it's time to ask my colleagues and Facebook acquaintances if they'd like to help me by playtesting the game.

This is going to be my first game, and I'm wondering if I can somehow upload it as a "closed beta" to the App Store and generate a couple of keys/tokens, so I could hand these to my playtesters? This way they wouldn't have to install unsigned developer versions, so they'd also be testing the real installation process, and of course paying customers wouldn't even be seeing the product until I make it public.

Is this how a closed-beta testing goes at all?

Answer 1

For the (iOS) App Store, you can leverage Apple's TestFlight beta testing program.

This involves preparing a build and uploading it to your account via iTunes Connect (so you'll need a record created for the app). You can distribute the beta of the app to private, internal testers or external testers, although the latter does involve going through a miniature app-review style process.

Internal testers must be members of your account's organization and you're limited to about 30 or so. External testers don't need to be, they just need to be invited via an e-mail address, and you have a much higher limit of a few thousand.

TestFlight is available for iOS, tvOS, and watchOS (as of this writing).