According to sites like Semrush, the US makes about a third of the traffic in Itch.
The second most popular country is Brazil with 1/20th of the traffic.
China seems to be less than 3% of the traffic, so it makes complete sense for devs to prioritize an English translation as opposed to other languages; the biggest share of the traffic exclusively speaks English!
1.Itch.io != indie game, they are not equivalent relationships, but contain relationships. Just because Ith.io is popular in your circle doesn't mean it all equals indie games, indie games are never a standalone website. Due to language limitations, your main activities are on English websites. However, this does not mean that there are only English websites in the world. If language is used as a boundary, there may even be more Chinese speakers than English speakers in the world. But would you say that the most common people in the world are Chinese? No, you only say that the most common people are the ones you have seen the most, and you think they are people from your country or neighboring countries. The standard is subjective, and you think that Ith.io is equivalent to independent games, which directly denies the efforts of all other independent game websites, including those independent developers who maintain the website
2.If you insist that the cultural characteristic of indie games is that they are in English, then what about indie games whose main language is non English? Do they not deserve to be independent games, or do they have to be in English to be independent games? I don't know if you realize that such words are very hurtful to independent developers who come from non English speaking countries, and this idea is implicit in racial discrimination thinking. you think that this culture is based on language, not on a certain spirit, not on a certain dream, not on a goal people wanna achieve
> 1.Itch.io != indie game
Yeah, that's fair, but i'll still mention that there are around 1.4 million games on itch. That's 10 times the amount of game Steam has, or Gamejolt has, or 4399 has; aka, itch is the biggest indie gaming site; it would make sense for non english-speaking users to come here and still release game in english, since that's the biggest slice of the userbase.
As I said in my last reply; America has a third of the visits, so more than 60% of itch users are not native english speakers
> No, you only say that the most common people are the ones you have seen the most
By population, India has the most amount of people, and I can tell you I see plenty indians. Do with that what you will, I barely see Americans when walking around.
>Ith.io is equivalent to independent games, which directly denies the efforts of all other independent game websites, including those independent developers who maintain the website
No i'm not? "itch is the game platform/markeplace with the most amout of indie games ever" is a factual statement. Just because it has more games than major stores like steam or epic game store, or even smaller sites like RPGMaker.net doesn't mean anything.
I'm not saying "you're a moron if you try to make a game hosting site". people have had entire careers made on newgrounds or gamejolt without ever touching itch, and I don't care about neither those site nor itch, just do what makes you happy. I release games on RPGMaker.net, even if the site has only 4k games in total. That's less than the amount of games that a single GMTK jam gives birth to, but it doesn't invalidate the site.
> I don't know if you realize that such words are very hurtful to independent developers who come from non English speaking countries
I also come from a non english speaking country???
According to the English Proficency Index my country is one of the European countries with the worse english proficency amongst its citizens and ranks much, much lower than China (or at least Hong Kong). I 've been raised here and my family can't speak english very well, so it's not even a case of "I learnt it because I grew up in a English-speaking setting", nor did I take any particular special course.
> this idea is implicit in racial discrimination thinking
????
"Many developers release in English because English reaches the largest share of their potential audience", is racist how???
People who can't speak english very well can also make their games in broken english or in their native language; I'll play games with amateurish english translation and I won't play games I can't understand, but I'm not saying you can't develop games if you can't speak english??? Nor that non-english speaking citizens are inferior in any way???? what?????
I don't see how my argument relates to race. I'm talking about platform demographics and localization priorities, not about the value of any nationality or ethnicity.
In any case; if I ever get to release games on steam and they sell well, I will most definitively include a chinese translation, as long as I can afford it; the font and engines I use are setup so that chinese characters can be easily plugged in; it's just that as long as I'm a hobbyist I won't put the effort to translate in any language (except japanese; if you translate for free hit me up), including my own native language simply because, as most hobbyists who are here will tell you; it requires much work and budgeting, when my hobby and passion is MAKING games, not TRANSLATING them.
If you're asking why Steam indies don't have chinese translations, then that's a good question you should ask in a marketing discord, as I see discussions related to chinese translation on a more professional level in there, not on itch. Steam has a much bigger Chinese playerbase so asking there is totally valid.
I have never said that making English games is wrong. You don't need to deliberately define my statement with this binary view. Language can coexist
Your statement precisely confirms my point of view, there is no need to say more
3. Very good, then at least you understand what I'm saying, and you should also understand what you're saying. You don't need to make up for your comments, as your initial remarks already implied this negative thought
4. I have never said how English games themselves are. You don't need to constantly use this binary approach to discuss the relationship between English and games with me. What I have always said is the behavior of adding a certain type of localized translation to games: some games do not consider Asian languages at all, while others intentionally avoid Chinese translation and only do Korean and Japanese translation when adding Asian languages. I can understand the former. Some people are only willing to include languages within a certain range of regions, but the latter itself is a clear form of discrimination and bias. I believe you should not be unable to see it. What I want to say is this situation of avoiding Chinese translation due to various languages. And your ideas are clearly the same as mine: any language is the same when doing localization translation. So great, the difficulty of adding any language is the same. Some people complain that Chinese translation cannot find people to help, so AI can be used to do basic work. Moreover, if they really want to find someone instead of just complaining, they can easily find real people to help
5. I know that independent development work can be tiring. What I want to say is that some people are unwilling to do it because of the workload, which is understandable, while others are simply biased and deliberately avoid it. There is no need to hide such facts. Since these people cannot eliminate their own biased thoughts, I can only tell others how to do Chinese translation more easily as a help. You can also see that some people here believe that the difficulty of Chinese translation lies not in language but in fonts or other issues. I think this is because they don't know much about Chinese translation, so I went to tell them which font packages are better, and I am also happy to help those who really want to do it but don't know how to do it. But for those who refuse to do it due to discrimination and prejudice, I naturally can't do anything, just like you said asking such questions on professional forums. In fact, I have already asked and tried to ask other similar questions, but my personal experience is that they basically don't discuss substantive difficulties with me, and the final topic always turns to various false discriminatory and biased news. The people on professional forums are just ordinary people, and they themselves contain a lot of biases that make it impossible to have normal discussions. For example, some people on the forum speak with bias, but after I correct it, they believe it is not important at all. This attitude is a contemptuous attitude that is not mentioned
6.Before some months, people who were doing Chinese translation on Steam encountered a big news story. An independent developer who was doing pixel platform jumping insisted on not using Chinese and instead mocked Chinese people who voluntarily came to help him with localization translation on his own media. He deliberately doubled the price of the Chinese section and continued to maintain his discriminatory attitude. This behavior was also supported by his fans and some independent developers like him. So I think people should not pretend that discrimination and prejudice do not exist. If you can find a cockroach in the sunshine, then in fact, cockroaches in the darkness have already piled up like mountains. Of course, the only thing I can do is to provide some translation assistance. I just want to offer some help that I can provide myself to developers who want to do it but don't know how to do it
