The worst rent seekers come for everything

"Font" and "licensing" are not words that belong together. "Oh, I took the alphabet and made it slightly different - you know, like every single person who ever learned how to write - only I did it on a computer so now you have to pay me forever if you want your computer to write like mine does".

Seriously. I would work very hard on my own font before I would pay to license one.

I wonder if it's easier now than it was when I was in highschool. I remember wanting to make my own "hand written" font after getting a scanner for the first time and it was an ordeal.

Not a fan of generative works, but this seems like a clear place to use it to fuck shit up. Nih.hira.term.aigen.ttf Nih.katak.term.aigen.ttf Nih.kanji1.term.aigen.ttf Nih.kanji2.term.aigen.ttf Etc Not the fault of the prompter if the resulting fonts appear to resemble licensed fonts, which are often slightly different copies of each other anyway. Generative works cannot be copyrighted, so it would forever be in the public domain. The only drawback would be that you would have to announce that you used slop in your game.

Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives

> It’s also worth noting that in the case of games in Japanese, it’s not so easy for developers to find alternatives. While games using English can rely on system UI fonts, cheap commercial fonts or open-source options, the sheer number of characters used in Japanese means high-quality fonts are extremely difficult and expensive to make, so few affordable alternatives are available. There's already a decent selection of high quality, freely available Japanese fonts here: https://fonts.google.com/?lang=ja_Jpan

I don't think that a single product whose price has multiplied by 50 times at once has ever been successful. Shit, even small price increases on streaming services over time cause people to resort to privacy (as we all should). 50 times at once is fucking insane. I don't think that any reasonable developer will actually be buying this shit, because there's always better alternatives available. This is fucking stupid.

It's artwork, like any other visual element in a game. The problem is price-gouging. Japan should set national maximum rates. You drew every fucking kanji in a cool new style? Great, here's some money. Emphasis on some.

So the bar has shifted from "it's okay to replace dish-washers and others such staff with robots, as long as *artist* jobs are protected" to "well, okay, you can replace *certain kinds* of artist with robots." Which kind of artist is next in line?

Calling every use slop is like calling all e-mail spam.

Excellent time for Japanese devs to collectively develop some open-source fonts. Many hands make light work.

I mean, it's not the fault of the artists, and I don't really think this is meant to hurt them at all. They wanted to pay for the work of artists, but I also think it's unreasonable to expect game studios to spend 50 times more than they were before, for, forgive me if I'm wrong, a worse product. Ai is obviously not preferable, and it's not what I'd choose in this scenario, but it's also better than feeding Monotype's greed.

Right, it's okay if you're saving a lot of money in the process.

Its more likely they increased the price and immediately starting shaking down anyone who was paying for the old license price. Its a frustrating scummy tech company "strategy" that unfortunately works because someone at a developer or publisher will be willing to pay the hike if it means avoiding any legal battle.

Then use [a free OFL-licensed font](https://fontmeme.com/fonts/japanese-fonts-collection/). Or cooperate to commission your own fonts to share among this consortium. Really a non-issue if you're not stupid.

> Generative works cannot be copyrighted While that is generally true, a derivative work of a copyrighted work is usually copyrighted by the original author. That it what makes generative AI so risky. A court could order "This is a automated modification of work XY, thereby the full copyright lies with the author of work XY."

Sorry, you think that they're suddenly going to be paying artists 50 times more as well? No, their pay is probably going to stay right where it is. Monotype executives however, are probably going to be expecting some nice bonuses. This is all assuming that Monotype pays the font artists based on how much their font sells, and not a flat rate to simply create one as a contractor of some kind. I wouldn't know, I know very little about fonts and Monotype. Best thing that studios could do is probably commission their own font artists for a more reasonable amount to create a font for them. I guess that also depends on how much time and effort it takes artists to create a font, and how much they charge. Depending on the price, that may also be difficult to do for a smaller studio. This could all have been prevented if writing kanji in slightly different ways wasn't something that could be copyrighted, or if Monotype hadn't raised prices so much.

Man, shit is so fucked up. I wonder how bad things in general will have to be until something might get done about it.