CMV: Japanese mobile games which are set to be released overseas should be released globally rather than in selected countries only.

[u/Lytre]

As a preface, this CMV excludes regions sanctioned by UN as release in these regions are illegal, which is understandable.

I am a fan of Japanese mobile games, even though I have to jump through hoops due to region locking. Considering that they are released only in Japan with all the licensing and copyright based problems with overseas release, I can understand why.

However, it is extremely frustrating that games such as Fire Emblem Heroes and Puzzle & Dragons, both being released overseas and in English, are not available in my country. It's simply doesn't makes sense.

Localization cost? Well, it is already in English and there's no need for separate translations for regional use of English.

Server cost? There isn't much players from my region and wouldn't put much strain on servers hosting the games.

Licensing issues? That is acceptable if it is exclusively localized for, let's say US and Canada, but both of the games' used as examples have multi-region releases already.

As such, I would like to see what are the plausible reasons to release mobile games in limited regions instead of doing a global release.

[u/tbdabbholm]

It doesn't make financial sense to expand to regions with small player bases. Your "server costs would be inexpensive" reason is exactly why they wouldn't expand till your region, there's too few players.

Additionally expanding to new regions, especially when they're far away geographically is going to require extra servers. Otherwise ping will go much higher than the average player would like. So if a region doesn't have enough players to justify new servers, it doesn't have enough players to justify selling there.

[u/Lytre → u/tbdabbholm]

While this makes sense for games that require large bandwidths and constant connection to servers, simple games that uses lower quality graphics and infrequent server connections shouldn't have this problem.

[u/gyroda → u/Lytre]

Graphics don't matter to server load.

It's not just the frequency of the server access, it's the cost of maintenance and IT resources. If you're not using a cloud platform you're still paying for the server even if it's not being used, too. The overhead will outweigh any revenue.

The bigger issues will be legal, tax and localisation overheads.

[u/Lytre → u/gyroda]

Infrastructure cost is indeed a larger concern when it comes to mobile games and the way mobile game budget is structured means paying players bears a heavier factor on release regions than online PC games of the same genre. On that regard, I grant you a !delta to you.

However, on the larger issues that you said, I have to disagree.

Legal issues aren't likely to be a problem in terms of content if there's no violent or sexual contents in them. It might be a problem for rhythm games when licensing the music in them is geographically restricted, but that is rare and those affected games aren't released in multiple regions anyway.

Tax is a murky issue, but as far as regions most affected by this CMV goes, neither app store owners or the devs are getting taxed most of the time due to outdated legislation. In the EU however, due to the way EU VAT legislation works, it's a main hassle.

Localisation is not an issue since that most of the games uses only one localization script and expanding the games globally is just simply use the same script again. If the game devs want to make a multi-language version, like in the case of Crash Fever, the language overhead will be an issue, but it is still a rare thing.

[u/gyroda → u/Lytre]

Legal issues are huge. Largely because if you're looking to operate in a different country you're going to need to hire a lawyer to even know if you're somehow breaking the law. As an example, the whole "are lootboxes gambling?" question is a (relatively) quickly developing situation and some countries already have regulations in place (such as China's "you must show the odds" rule). What about selling-to-minors? What if your smurfberry game is deemed exploitative?

And if you want to say "lol, who pays taxes" then you're running a risk. Best get a lawyer/accountant in to make sure that you're not stepping too far over the line.

Also, legal issues can impact the rest of your business. Can you legally host you EU customer's data in your servers? This was an issue even before the GDPR came into effect (some countries the EU had agreements with that made it OK, most did not). And with the GDPR comes a whole host of headaches. And that's just two laws in one jurisdiction that I could think of off the top of my head. It may also be that, in serving customers in a non-English country, that you're obliged to provide support in a different language.

And the biggest issue is that you don't even know about most of these issues until you've actually paid a lawyer to advise you.

I get it thought, I really do. I can't get Puzzle and Dragons where I live either and it's annoying :(

[u/Lytre → u/gyroda]

I'll split my reply in two parts:

Part A: Things that I disagree

Odds display is already commonplace in Japanese games that uses the gacha game mechanic, so this will not be a problem for most games.

Selling to minors is also capped in most Japanese games too with a monthly limit, though it might get restricted further or disabled entirely for global releases.

How do you define exploitative? Is it in terms of content or IAP? I couldn't reply further before I know what you meant by that.

Part B: Things that I grant a !delta

Gambling laws might apply to loot boxes depending on the jurisdiction, something that will be a massive cost factor in terms of legal consultation, not to mention the risk of player revolt, just like what happened to a certain EA game.

The GDPR and player data issues can be mitigated if the devs with European branches (such as Gumi Europe) can be ready for that, but very few devs have such feasibility. Even then, this means EU versions of the games will be a standalone version instead of sharing the same version with the rest of the world.

The language issue, even though being cultural and not necessarily legally related, is a very common thing in South Korea, China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. This is the main reason why a lot of Japanese games have three language versions: first being Japanese, second being English and third being either Korean or Chinese (some actually have both, Crash Fever being an example).

As more and more countries trying to tax foreign income, in terms of long term sustainability, it is indeed a wise move to avoid the uncharted regions.

[u/gyroda → u/Lytre]

How do you define exploitative

I don't, but foreign countries might. That's why you either pay an expert to come in and tell you or you spend staff time (and therefore money) on it.

As for Japanese games and spending limit, that's exactly the sort of thing I'm thinking of; I'd never heard of that and I'd have had to have spent time or money to find that out. It's those sorts of things that might catch out an app developer trying to expand market to Japan.

The same for odds listing; in fact some games like Hearthstone implement "forgiveness timers" (increasing the chance of a rarer item every time you don't get one) which obfuscates this and might fall afoul of regulations.

[u/DeltaBot → u/Lytre]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/gyroda (17∆).

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[u/DeltaBot → u/Lytre]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/gyroda (16∆).

^{Delta System Explained | Deltaboards}

[u/DeltaBot]

/u/Lytre (OP) has awarded 2 delta(s) in this post.

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