Japanese devs face font licensing dilemma as leading provider increases annual plan price from $380 to $20,000+

Japanese game makers are struggling to locate affordable commercial fonts after one of the country’s leading font licensing services raised the cost of its annual plan from around $380 to $20,500 (USD).

As reported by Gamemakers and GameSpark and translated by Automaton, Fontworks LETS discontinued its game licence plan at the end of November.

The expensive replacement plan – offered through Fontwork’s parent company, Monotype – doesn’t even provide local pricing for Japanese developers, and comes with a 25,000 user-cap, which is likely not workable for Japan’s bigger studios.

The problem is further compounded by the difficulties and complexities of securing fonts that can accurately transcribe Kanji and Katakana characters.

“This is a little-known issue, but it’s become a huge problem in some circles,” wrote CEO of development studio Indie-Us Games.

UI/UX designer Yamanaka stressed that this would be particularly problematic for live service games; even if studios moved quickly and switched to fonts available through an alternate licensee, they will have to re-test, re-validate, and re-QA check content already live and in active use.

The crisis could even eventually force some Japanese studios to rebrand entirely if their corporate identity is tied to a commercial font they can no longer afford to license.