Hotta Studio’s Tower of Fantasy is one of the most popular Genshin Impact clones to date. However, as we pointed out in our review, it’s not exactly the best or most finished game in the open-world gacha genre.
One of the main issues with Tower of Fantasy is its poor translation. Now only are some sections of the game are in broken English, but some parts of the game are not translated at all. However, Hotta has plans to fix this: unpaid labour!
Fans translate Tower of Fantasy
Revealed in a post on the game’s subreddit, publisher Level Infinite is asking fans to translate the gacha game. This means that instead of hiring actual translation services, they will make fans translate the game for free.
This isn’t even new for the gacha game. In fact, the game’s closed beta tests had numerous instances of fans translating the game for free. One user explained that they were part of a group that made sure the game’s early content was available in English.
“Just a FYI, there was a group of us that helped during the betas with localization and translation for English. To my knowledge, no one was compensated at all. We covered basically level 1-50 content,” one user said. “I was told the devs would maybe give us a title or something but that nor any other compensation was given.”
Gamers creating free translations has been done numerous times in the past. However, these are usually mods for games that fans are passionate about, not just free, exploited labour.
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They have the money
Hotta Studio and Level Infinite’s cheapskating is made worse by the fact that Tower of Fantasy is a multi-million dollar success. Over the game’s launch period, tens of millions of dollars of revenue was made.
In just two weeks, Tower of Fantasy revenue crossed $34 million. With the game still going as one of the biggest open world gachas, there is no reason why translators should not be paid for their work.
Hopefully, with enough backlash, translators for the game will be compensated. Oh, and we’re not talking about in-game rewards — actual money, Level Infinite! Don’t be so stingy!
