Localization is something that a lot of companies do in order to make their product relatable to the market audience. This is mostly done through the translation of international products. The difference between translation and localization has taken a completely different meaning… and Capcom just fucked that up.
In a recent post to the social media platform X, the Capcom Localization Team presented a series of values and statements on what their team would be doing concerning the localization of Capcom games for non-Japanese markets going forward. You can see this announcement in the screenshot below:
The announcement has been met with a lot of negative reactions from people who post on the social media platform as some of the terms used in the statement follow a string of controversial changes that have happened within the video game business over the last decade.
A big part of the statement from the “The Importance of Context”, “Cultural Sensitivity in Characters”, and “Inclusive Language and Representation” sections are what people are taking issue with, as these sections contain “corporate speak” for changing and adapting the stories, characters, and other parts of the game to appeal to “modern audiences” aka the very vocal DEI crowd.
This announcement comes at a time when there is a major consumer backlash against DEI (also known as Diversity and Inclusion) companies and practices when it comes to video game creation and translation.
While many people are happy for diversity and inclusion to happen in video games and other media, the backlash comes from forcing it into the mediums in order to get funding or other perks when it comes to financial gain, as has recently been exposed in the video game industry by a former Blizzard developer Mark “Grummz” Kern, and the outing of DEI Consulting company “Sweet Baby Inc” and others being very influential in video game development.
In the era where there is a big backlash of policies where diversity and inclusiveness are used as shields when bad decisions are made that change the way that another country’s language, culture, mannerisms, and other parts are completely rewritten into something akin to a narrative push by people who hold grudges against society, gamers, and just about everything on this planet as “wrong”, making a statement like this is one of the worst decisions ever by a company.
Hopefully, Capcom listens to the community on this one, makes a retraction to the statement, and changes their Localization Team into more of a direct translation team sooner rather than later, or they are going to take a hit from where they don’t want to be hit… Their profits and bottom line.
