Why no Spanish language?

[MoltresRider]

Spanish is the second most spoken language in the US and multiple countries speak Spanish yet FFXIV to this day has not a Spanish option.

I have a few Spanish first language friends who would love to see the game in Spanish. I also know that there are plenty of Spanish speaking players in the game. I see shouts and stuff in Spanish.

Also I want to learn Spanish because I want to vacation to Argentina some day and they primarily speak Spanish. One of the mentioned friends lives in Argentina. Having the game in Spanish would really help me lean the language alongside apps and college.

I would create a character and go through the whole game again if I could do it to help me learn Spanish.


I know that there is enough demand for it so why hasn't SE implemented it?

[Callinon]

Adding more languages isn't trivial. You're talking about hundreds of thousands of lines of dialog plus a few hundred hours of voice acting for several dozen characters.

[MoltresRider]

I understand that and I am not saying add all the languages, but Spanish is very widely spoken these days

[Hysterior]

Could be a data-based decision... and you might not like what will follow.

I can't talk about Square Enix or FFXIV but from my personal experience with another publisher and others MMOs (Again don't shoot me, this is not MY POV, just something I have seen in another company). For those games I worked on, after marketing studies, Spanish-speaking and Brazilian-speaking countries were put into the "low spenders" tier. Which means less promotion in these countries, less support and in some cases low/no localization.

Not saying this is the case for SE but it is possible that decision are not taken by "how many people speak this language" but more "how many spenders are in this region compared to others".

[Kemiko]

I have to wonder if not promoting or localizing something in a region because it won't sell well there is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you don't put the effort into it, how can you expect a good return?

[Callinon]

I have to wonder if not promoting or localizing something in a region because it won't sell well there is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you don't put the effort into it, how can you expect a good return?

Probably to some degree that's true. But they'd have data from other titles and products that WERE localized into those languages. Obviously you have some apples/oranges problems there as those products were not THIS product, but depending on the numbers it might not be worth the expense to try. And again, it's a HUGE expense to localize the game into another language... any other language.

[Seleni]

Localization is not trivial, especially for a heavily story-focused game like FFXIV. It’s not just translating the text and names. Characters and content may get changed to fit the culture and/or laws of the country that it’s released in. And a support team needs to be established for the language/locale. (Probably a set of forums too, looking at how the forums are structured here.)

Games are usually tested and supported using the official language of the country that it’s released in. The official language in the United States is (American) English. It is expected that the players within the US (and Canada) are fluent in English, even if it’s not their first language. So they likely do not see much benefit to adding Spanish support.

[MistakeNot]

Games are usually tested and supported using the official language of the country that it’s released in. The official language in the United States is (American) English. It is expected that the players within the US (and Canada) are fluent in English, even if it’s not their first language. So they likely do not see much benefit to adding Spanish support.

I am not sure how you think that is at all relevant. FFXIV is played and supported in many places besides the US. Japan obviously, since that is where the game is created. Besides Japanese and English, both French and German are officially supported languages.
Spanish is spoken in many places in the world - most of them outside the US. There are probably more people with Spanish as their native language than there are with French or German.

[Seleni]

I am not sure how you think that is at all relevant. FFXIV is played and supported in many places besides the US. Japan obviously, since that is where the game is created. Besides Japanese and English, both French and German are officially supported languages.
Spanish is spoken in many places in the world - most of them outside the US. There are probably more people with Spanish as their native language than there are with French or German.

Short version:
SE likely does not believe the number of “Spanish-only” players is enough to justify localization cost.

It’s a business. Everything ultimately comes down to cost-benefit analysis.

For a language to be officially supported in an MMO, it’s not just the cost of translate the text and voice. They need to provide support; both in-game and out. It’s an on-going cost. To justify the cost you’d need enough paying customers whom they’d _lose_ for not having that language supported. Just having a large number of people, who may or may not be playing this game, is not sufficient, especially if many of them are proficient in more than one language.

It’s probably for similar reasons why they only support French and German, even though there are so many other languages used in Europe.

[Catwho]

This makes me wonder if they might be open to supporting a fan localization project. Hear me out: In the software I work on IRL, we code and program in English but have a localization code for every single component of the system. This allows our client in Quebec to manually translate it themselves to Quebecois French for their speakers, who can then choose what language they wish to default to (English or French) on a case by case basis.

Fan localization could then be crowd sourced, such that bilingual speakers of a language could translate the base game, NPC dialogue, and system and menu options. Obviously, voice cutscenes would have to be in a different language, but as someone who uses the NA English version of the game but Japanese voices, that might not be a deal breaker for many people. Even people like me whose second language is Spanish and are at intermediate fluency could assist with that project.

Then, the localization patch could be installed by users on the fly, instantly translating the game to the selected language.

SE would have to provide the framework for this - a place to upload a language localization pack, a means of translating the dialogue in the game (read: the scripts and matched localization codes), and a means of downloading the selected language - but a lot of that work is already done in the game as it is since multiple languages are supported already. And this would allow for far, far more languages than just Spanish! I know there has been a request for Italian localization. Spanish and Portuguese might not be huge enough markets to hire a professional localization team, but crowd sourcing the grunt work would let the fan translated localizations be a labor of love. It'd also have to come with a disclaimer that "hey this is not the official translation in your language" as well as a means of submitting error corrections when they come across something that is obviously wrong and was done by a 2nd year DuoLingo student.

(If I remember correctly, French and German are required to be able to sell games in the EU, but Spanish and Italian are not, so take that up with the governing body of the EU if you want to enact a forced change.)