The Global Game Localization Market Is Growing

Games are increasingly becoming services instead of standalone products that players buy once in a complete state and play for several hours until they finish the single-player campaign. Nowadays, development of games continues even after launch. Bug fixes, updates, downloadable content (DLC), and special events are some of the extra content that is continuously added to games, sometimes years after initial release. The extra content must be localized too, of course.

With the growth of free-to-play (F2P) games, which make profit from buyable extras (such as skins, icons, or additional lives or time), developers need to add attractive content on a regular basis to tempt players to make a purchase. The old trend of selling items that help you beat other players in online multiplayer games, known as “pay to win” is fortunately long gone, but developers then turned to loot boxes instead. These sometimes provide in-game advantages and have been accused of being like gambling due to their element of chance, angering many players. In-game additions must be not only localized, but also promoted, which means marketing material is constantly being created and translated. Besides, many F2P games make revenue from advertisements, and guess what? Those ads must be shown to players in their native language, too, in order to be most effective.