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Old 2014-08-12, 14:14   Link #20
VDZ
Senior Member
 
 
Join Date: Sep 2008
Quote:
Originally Posted by Student no.0 View Post
Maybe a possible change of heart? I'd find it really weird why some game companies wouldn't want some of their games localized (see Muv-Luv).
The situation around Muv-Luv is a tad more complicated. Age (creator of Muv-Luv) has reluctantly showed interest in the Western VN market since at least 2010. However, Age is notoriously bad/incompetent/unlucky/whatever you make of it business-wise, and they've been in financial trouble more than once. (Fun fact: Muv-Luv consists of two games because their budget ran out after Unlimited.) This has to be kept in mind when considering Age's position on official localizations.

While Amaterasu was translating Muv-Luv Alternative (2010), MangaGamer was negotiating with Age about official releases of their games (they were also negotiating with Liar-soft at the time). Eventually, the decision was made to work with Amaterasu translations to use their fan translations. Amaterasu decided not to release their patches and to cooperate with MangaGamer to use their translations in the official releases. However, for a very long time after that, things were quiet on the official side of things - Amaterasu barely heard anything from MangaGamer other than that negotiations were still ongoing. Meanwhile, previous efforts to cooperate with fan translators, mainly by JAST USA, were leading to absolutely nothing. (JAST started cooperating with fan translators in July 2009, and it wasn't until May 2011 that the cooperations finally led to their first results with the release of Demonbane (of which the fan translation was near completion in 2009). Even to this day, more official cooperation fan translations remain in limbo than have been released.)

Amaterasu lost faith in the cooperation, and this happened:
Quote:
Originally Posted by novelnews
Amaterasu deal falls apart, two patches released

Amaterasu has announced the release of an English translation patch for âge’s MuvLuv Alternative as well as Liar-soft’s Shikkoku no Sharnoth, stating that they are giving up on the licensing deal with MangaGamer and citing, amongst other things, disappointment with âge deciding to offer MangaGamer Kimi ga Nozomu Eien instead. They will now proceed to translate AKABEiSOFT2’s remade version of A Profile and Liar-soft’s Forest after that. A representative of Katahane’s fan translation team also chimed in to say that disappointment in their dealings with MangaGamer also led them to releasing their patch. In response, MangaGamer has sent us a bilingual official statement regarding the matter, which is reproduced in the last section of this article. In short, they express disappointment in the turn of events and outline possible fallout from Amaterasu’s decision.
Ever since then, there's been no news regarding any official localizations of Age games. Liar-soft remained interested in the Western market and it looks like the incident didn't prevent them from cooperating with MangaGamer again several years later, and an official release of Ourai no Gahkthun was announced last Anime Expo.
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