Paradox's move regarding Chinese localization

[Michael Kim]

I just posted this on Reddit (No links to reddit), but I'm posting it here as well to gain more awareness. I will also ask in every non-English forum for people to translate this post, because it could happen to them as well.

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UPDATE

Apparently my research result was not entirely correct, as Stellaris was not launched with Chinese support. It only briefly had Chinese as a selectable language during 1.4. Again, I've been playing in English so I could only rely on online material. Sorry for the misinformation.

Thanks a lot for @Dnote to clarify.

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I'm Chinese so I have access to the Chinese online community, but I've been playing Stellaris in English since day one, so I didn't know anything until just now. After seeing [this post](No links to reddit)I decided to do some research. Here's what I found:

• Stellaris launched (1.0) with Chinese localization, but the quality was rather terrible. Literally 'literally unplayable'.
• Due to the poor quality, Chinese localization was removed at 2016-12-09. There was a 'ghost update', an update without increase in version or change in checksum. All it did was removing Chinese from a selectable language.
• Paradox promised to reintroduce Chinese localization after polishing it.
• At that time Chinese localization files still exist, and you can add it to the selectable languages by modifying `languages.yml`.
• Until 2.0.1 things have not changed. As people have pointed out in the linked post, Chinese localization files exist for 2.0.1, but not for 2.0.2.
• Paradox customer support confirms that Paradox has dropped Chinese localization entirely, contrary to what they have promised. (source: recent Steam review) Simplified Chinese has also been removed from the language list on the Steam store page, but I'm not sure when this happened.
• They have also retroactively removed all Chinese localization files from all versions accessible by beta, which means right now you can't play 1.0 with official Chinese localization even if you want to. I have downloaded all betas to confirm this. The only beta version with Chinese localization files is 2.0.1, which I believe they forgot about.

Also:

• Chinese is very, very different from English, and most people in China can understand little English if at all. Which means people paid for a game they can't play now, and cannot refund either per Steam's refund policy. Most people won't even consider buying the game if there wasn't official Chinese localization at launch. And yes, there are localization mods, but that's not what people have paid for.
• Stellaris is the first Paradox grand strategy title that supports Chinese. For earlier titles like EU4, a Chinese localization mod is impossible because the game does not support Chinese characters (I tried). This is one of the reasons why, along with Stellaris' global success, it is very popular in China. As some Steam review says (I am yet to find a reliable source for it, but I wouldn't doubt it since China has a huge player base), China is 5th largest region that contributes to Stellaris' sales.

So to sum up, Paradox has just screwed a good portion of its fan base. Truly a dick move.

 

[Alex_brunius]

• Paradox promised to reintroduce Chinese localization after polishing it.

Forgive me for being skeptical but can you point me in the right direction of where they posted this promise?

 

[Michael Kim]

Forgive me for being skeptical but can you point me in the right direction of where they posted this promise?

Since they didn't announce withdrawing Chinese localization in the first place, I don't think I can find anything here on the forum. However there are online Chinese material that supports this.

Even if they never promised, still they removed Chinese localization after launching with it.

 

[Alex_brunius]

Since they didn't announce withdrawing Chinese localization in the first place, I don't think I can find anything here on the forum. However there are online Chinese material that supports this.

Could still be interesting to read a google translate of this in that case, but I still doubt Paradox representatives would communicate in Chinese if they can't translate their game to it...

Even if they never promised, still they removed Chinese localization after launching with it.

So why are people getting angry now about something they did in 2016?

As far as I understand Chinese localization haven't been advertised as supported since 2016 ( if it ever was Edit: Seems it wasn't judging by posts below ), so no one should have any reason to feel cheated.

 

[semaphore]

Chinese localisation was added only in 1.4, on 6 December 2016 - not 1.0 as the OP claims. It was removed a few days later in 1.4.1 as a selectable option. Source: https://www.zhihu.com/question/53337711

1.4.1 was obviously not a "ghost update", and it was released on 10 December. The changelog mentions "Minor fixes to localization". Source: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...checksum-1759-not-for-problem-reports.987525/

The localisation files apparently lingered on, but people were manually editing the settings to enable it for selection. This was obviously not intended behaviour, and anyone capable of doing this could have loaded the much higher quality Chinese language mods anyway. Source for the time of 1.6: https://github.com/cloudwu/stellaris_cn/issues/264

When the localisation was first discovered in 1.4, it was reported that Steam did not list Chinese as a supported language. Source: https://steamcn.com/t233395-1-1

Given how woefully incomplete the localisation was, it was obviously never supposed to have been released. Most likely someone accidentally marked a WIP as a selectable option, so it was hotfixed at the first opportunity.

I highly, highly doubt that Steam ever changed its store listing to advertise Stellaris as supporting Chinese, since the option was reversed in just three days. However, if they did, then I would agree Chinese players who bought it were cheated and deserve a refund.

Other than that, I don't see how you can call this a "dick move".

 

[Dnote]

Hey,

So here is the official line of communication regarding this.

Stellaris has not, to date, officially supported Simplified Chinese localization.

With relation to the localization files that you have seen, we have done some localization work at various points along the way into unsupported languages and every now and then some of those files accidentally make it into the live version of the game on Steam. This work has been for us to further explore and understand the potential of fully localizing the game into those languages, along with the effort/cost involved in doing so.

Now, this doesn't mean we will or won't do it, the decision has not been made yet, and we will continue to look into it on our side.

Thanks,

 

[Michael Kim]

Chinese localisation was added only in 1.4, on 6 December 2016 - not 1.0 as the OP claims. It was removed a few days later in 1.4.1 as a selectable option. Source: https://www.zhihu.com/question/53337711

1.4.1 was obviously not a "ghost update", and it was released on 10 December. The changelog mentions "Minor fixes to localization". Source: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...checksum-1759-not-for-problem-reports.987525/

Thank you for your clarification. I did not see these during my research. I will edit OP to reflect them.

 

[Michael Kim]

Hey,

So here is the official line of communication regarding this.

Stellaris has not, to date, officially supported Simplified Chinese localization.

With relation to the localization files that you have seen, we have done some localization work at various points along the way into unsupported languages and every now and then some of those files accidentally make it into the live version of the game on Steam. This work has been for us to further explore and understand the potential of fully localizing the game into those languages, along with the effort/cost involved in doing so.

Now, this doesn't mean we will or won't do it, the decision has not been made yet, and we will continue to look into it on our side.

Thanks,

Thank you for your reply!

 

[semaphore]

Stellaris has not, to date, officially supported Simplified Chinese localization.

If you ever add Simplified Chinese support, I volunteer to make a Traditional Chinese version