Mobile games are hell. Translations are hell. Imagine handling both simultaneously.

I often see people complain that their favorite mobage gets an English version in the form of a separate app, completely disconnected from the original. “Surely it would’ve been better if they just added the translations into the original app!” It sounds perfect on paper, but in reality there are a couple of hurdles that influence publisher’s decisions. Let’s look at some of them.

Catching up for the players

Let’s start with Launch Hype. The Launch Hype generally not only brings more eyes to the game in comparison to just Adding a Language, but also creates an illusion for the players that they’re all at equal opportunities from the start. I’m saying “illusion”, of course, because we all know how whaling usually works. In any case, inviting a huge chunk of new players into an already existing Hell (the original app) would require creating some kind of a special event to make it more attractive, as well as (preferably) giving them a way to read the previous event stories, so that the players don’t feel like they’re missing out.

• Q: Don’t new players join mobage all the time anyway? What’s the difference?
• A: This is a bit bigger than that. In the eyes of the publisher, this has to be The Big Thing that attracts a lot of new eyes, without becoming a PR disaster. This isn’t just “another Wednesday” for the company - it’s often a “make it or break it” event.

Catching up for the translators

An attempt to add an English translation into the original app brings us to the fact that the translator(s) (hopefully plural, but we know that often that’s not the case) have to translate literally everything that came out before, and for long-established games that’s a ton of work. And no, they don’t have a choice to “not do the old stuff” because, again, people would want to read the previous event stories - otherwise they’re gonna complain that “the English version is not fully English” and that they “can’t get the full experience.”

And even after the translator(s) catch up, there’s a new hell that awaits them.

Schedules

A lot of mobage (not all of them, but definitely the majority) operate on extremely tight schedules, where the art and the story can sometimes be finished literal days before the event launch, giving the translators quite a challenge to go over thousands of lines in a couple of days. Of course, this wouldn’t be an issue for publishers because most of them don’t care, and think the translation is magic, but this can create more mistakes in the script than usual, and that’s never a good thing.

In conclusion, the only way for a multi-language release to exist without major issues is to be planned and launched with multiple languages in mind from the very beginning. Just like…

But what about Genshin?

Of course, you can argue that it played a big part in Genshin’s success (in addition to their insane marketing campaign). The Genshin project, at its core, was created with translation teams in mind, but it’s also important to note how much resources are dedicated to organize those teams and keep the quality consistent. Even with all that, they sometimes suffer from not having enough QA (or, most likely, not having enough time for QA). So, it’s still a rough road, even with all that money.

• Q: Why don’t mobage just start with multiple languages? It worked for Genshin!
• A: Starting a mobage (especially with a brand new IP or within a relatively small franchise) is already a risk. Even if they have foreigners in mind, the publishers prefer to test the waters with their main target audience first.

To sum it up, is adding a new language impossible? No. Could doing it in the middle of the run become very messy? Yes. Would publishers prefer to generate more hype by creating an entirely new Launch Event even though it costs them more money? Absolutely.

If it works and they get enough whales to support it, then it’s all good. If it doesn’t, they can just… close it. Not like it’s ever going to bring more than 10% of additional profit anyway.

That’s just business, baby.