Tower of Fantasy was supposed to be the Genshin Impact killer. Now, the developers are trying to get free labor from “localization experts.”
Announced in a Dev Report on the company’s website, the Tower of Fantasy team outlined some of the latest updates coming to the game.
However, the last point is the one we want to focus on. In a section called “We are looking for Localization Specialists” developer Hotta Studio notes:
Despite how much we would like to improve our localization qualities, we know we still have a lot to work on. Thus, we will be launching the “Localization Specialist” program to enlist players to help us optimize our localization quality (of course, your contribution will be properly compensated with in-game rewards). Please stay tuned for more detail a couple of days after the launch of the 2.0 version.
Hotta Studio
Look, it’s 2022, and this isn’t acceptable anymore. Pay people real money to do jobs and pay them well. Crowdsourcing localization efforts isn’t the play.
There are many reasons why this is ridiculous, but ultimately, it comes down to hiring the right people for the job to make a better product.
Actual localization experts have spent years learning the languages and what is required from the job. Getting players with a basic knowledge of language will result in a sub-par experience.
This is ridiculous any way you cut it, but especially so considering some of the other things Tower of Fantasy has come under fire for recently.
This isn’t the first controversy for Tower of Fantasy. Previously, the developers were caught using assets from popular games like Honkai Impact 3rd and Fate Grand Order.
Both examples are ridiculous and the devs apologized, but at some point, apologies are not enough.
It will be interesting to see if the developers continue forward with their plans for free labor or if they’ll backpedal and actually hire people. But regardless, maybe reconsider dropping cash in ToF for the time being.
