234
Japanese game developers face ridiculously high font license fees following US acquisition of major domestic provider. Live-service games to take the biggest blow (automaton-media.com)
submitted 1 day ago by misk@piefed.social to c/games@sh.itjust.works
44 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] e0qdk@reddthat.com 71 points 1 day ago

It’s also worth noting that in the case of games in Japanese, it’s not so easy for developers to find alternatives. While games using English can rely on system UI fonts, cheap commercial fonts or open-source options, the sheer number of characters used in Japanese means high-quality fonts are extremely difficult and expensive to make, so few affordable alternatives are available.

There's already a decent selection of high quality, freely available Japanese fonts here: https://fonts.google.com/?lang=ja_Jpan

[-] tuff_wizard@aussie.zone 21 points 1 day ago

Free for commercial use?

[-] phatcabbage@lemmy.world 23 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Yeah:

Yes, you can use them commercially, and even include them within a product that is sold commercially. Usage and redistribution conditions are specified in the license. The most common license is the SIL Open Font License. Some fonts are under the Apache license or Ubuntu Font License. You can redistribute open source fonts according to those conditions.

https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq#can_i_use_any_font_in_a_commercial_product

[-] arcterus@piefed.blahaj.zone 15 points 1 day ago

I'm guessing the problem is they want a relatively unique font to avoid looking the same as other games, and then once they've chosen their font they're pretty much stuck with it unless they're willing to change the look of their game (for live-service games at least). A number of the fonts there might work for new stuff though.

this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2025
234 points (100.0% liked)

Games

22146 readers
777 users here now

Video game news oriented community. No NanoUFO is not a bot :)

Posts.

  1. News oriented content (general reviews, previews or retrospectives allowed).
  2. Broad discussion posts (preferably not only about a specific game).
  3. No humor/memes etc..
  4. No affiliate links
  5. No advertising.
  6. No clickbait, editorialized, sensational titles. State the game in question in the title. No all caps.
  7. No self promotion.
  8. No duplicate posts, newer post will be deleted unless there is more discussion in one of the posts.
  9. No politics.

Comments.

  1. No personal attacks.
  2. Obey instance rules.
  3. No low effort comments(one or two words, emoji etc..)
  4. Please use spoiler tags for spoilers.

My goal is just to have a community where people can go and see what new game news is out for the day and comment on it.

Other communities:

Beehaw.org gaming

Lemmy.ml gaming

lemmy.ca pcgaming

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
nanoUFO@sh.itjust.works