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Japanese game devs face font dilemma as license increases from $380 to $20k

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Re: Japanese game devs face font dilemma as license increases from $380 to $20k

#31

Post by vee-kay »

omoikane wrote: post #16
Aachen wrote: post #6

Are there no fonts that are open for anyone to use, like what does a Linux distribution ship? Surely those can render Japanese characters? Maybe it's because it's a dumb question but the article doesn't really set the stage for me why it's an issue that 1 font licensing company raised its prices. I guess they must have a monopoly or else this change isn't commercially viable (the article just says "one of the country…

I know Noto Sans can render just about everything, and has a permissive license: https://fonts.google.com/noto I am not sure if it's possible to parameterize it to have the look that game developers wanted.

[flagged]

Re: Japanese game devs face font dilemma as license increases from $380 to $20k

#32

Post by kmeisthax »

Shank wrote: post #13

The lack of competence from companies that acquire Japanese companies, and then fail to even price things in yen or offer support packages that cater to Japanese customers is really something. It's one thing to raise the price on a license, but it's another thing to not even support local pricing (you can even do this dynamically) or try to meet users halfway. The thing that companies like this do not understand is t…

There used to be a meme of people thinking that the Japanese market was somehow inherently biased to domestic companies and unwilling to touch western products. When the reality is moreso that almost every western company that tries launching products in Japan assumes they can just crush the local competition and gets their shit kicked in for the trouble.

The few companies that actually did well in Japan did so specifically because they spent at least five minutes to understand the local context and adapt their business to actually make sense there. Any western companies that actually do this get embraced like nothing else by the Japanese audience. I'm reminded of Apple deliberately pushing for emoji in Unicode just so they could sell iPhones that weren't beholden to the horrible mess that was Japanese telecom emoji standards...

Re: Japanese game devs face font dilemma as license increases from $380 to $20k

#33

Post by yuriks »

michaelbuck wrote: post #21
conradev wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotype_Imaging#Consolidation... Fontworks’ team, type inventory, IP, technology, and services will join global type specialist Monotype–Monotype’s first acquisition in Japan. https://www.monotype.com/company/press-release/fontworks-pla...

Additional anecdote about Monotype pricing policies: https://old.reddit.com/r/graphic_design/comments/1jqqlm6/mon...

And after digging through the comments... Yup it's private equity again. PE buyouts should be considered criminal fraud.

Re: Japanese game devs face font dilemma as license increases from $380 to $20k

#36

Post by schainks »

Aachen wrote: post #6

Are there no fonts that are open for anyone to use, like what does a Linux distribution ship? Surely those can render Japanese characters? Maybe it's because it's a dumb question but the article doesn't really set the stage for me why it's an issue that 1 font licensing company raised its prices. I guess they must have a monopoly or else this change isn't commercially viable (the article just says "one of the country…

You can't just "swap a font out" without redoing all the work.

Type layout in Japanese in particular has a system of layered, complex rules that include rules that define how to combine Western glyphs with Japanese glyphs and produce visually harmonic work. Swapping a font out due to a cost issue is not workable.

Also, not all pan-asian fonts contain all the glyphs you need to render all the characters you want. A CJK font has tens of thousands of characters, and it wouldn't surprise me if some of these video games will use fonts with particular glyphs that are not always included in other fonts.

Monotype is giving these customers the finger while also ramming a bulldozer in their asses with this change. It's completely unacceptable, painfully rude, and ridiculously tone deaf. In fairness, this is totally on brand for Monotype.

Re: Japanese game devs face font dilemma as license increases from $380 to $20k

#37

Post by alephnerd »

yborg wrote: post #23
crooked-v wrote: post #15

The bigger issue here isn't the pricing, it's the 25,000 max users added to the licenses, which means that anyone who can genuinely afford these fonts isn't actually allowed to use them. Edit: This paragraph was incorrect: The fonts affected apparently include ones like the main Japanese language font used by the game Genshin Impact, which has 2.8 million daily users worldwide (no idea of the Japanese user count spec…

Genshin is produced by a Chinese company, MiHoYo. And I think Monotype will have a much harder time trying to strongarm a PRC-based company if they decide to try this there.

> Monotype will have a much harder time trying to strongarm a PRC-based company if they decide to try this there

Monotype has a Chinese subsidiary [0] which has worked with Chinese champions like Tencent [1] and Alibaba [2].

As long as a foreign vs Chinese business dispute doesn't involve a national champion or a very politically connected Chinese firm (or the foreign company made a partnership with a politically connected partner) the dispute is somewhat fair.

While China's leadership is trying to build self-sufficiency, it is also still trying to attract foreign companies to China and prevent an FDI outflow [3], and that requires some level of impartiality in contract disputes. China is not as economically isolated as Russia is today - though even Russian authorities tend to only use the heavy hammer against American and European companies as can be seen with the continued operation of Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, Vietnamese, and Indian firms in Russia despite the risk of sanctions.

[0] - https://cn.monotype-asia.com/contact-us

[1] - https://www.monotype.com/resources/case-studies/tencent-expa...

[2] - https://www.monotype.com/resources/case-studies/alibaba-grou...

[3] - https://www.gov.cn/zhengce/zhengceku/202507/content_7032625....

Re: Japanese game devs face font dilemma as license increases from $380 to $20k

#39

Post by jack1243star »

oefrha wrote: post #12
rpearl wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

perhaps when the clocks at https://clocks.brianmoore.com/ consistently make sense, AI could make a font. Even then, I wouldn't want it making a kanji font. Consider 感 and 惑, both of which would be taught before high school.

Sounds like you don't know the CJK font market. AI assisted font design is nothing new and especially useful for CJK since there are so many glyphs. There are plenty of foundries openly advertising AI-assisted fonts, e.g. https://izihun.com/fontxiazai/ziti-2673.html Also, generating images and programs are basically orthogonal. AI could generate impeccable photorealistic images of clocks years ago, and they're much m…

Those fonts look awful in a hard to describe way. Font uncanny-valley? I feel like a barcode reader trying to OCR meaning out of ink blots.
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