Double Fine cannot afford to localise ‘Psychonauts 2’

Double Fine’s Psychonauts 2 is unlikely to receive additional languages because it would take a budget they do not currently have.

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Initially spotted by Xbox News For Koreans on Twitter, a user had asked Double Fine if they could add simplified and traditional Chinese support to Psychonauts 2. James Spafford, the community manager at Double Fine, responded.

“We would love to add more languages to Psychonauts 2, and we are investigating to see if that could be possible at some future time.

@DoubleFine have said they don't have enough budget to add more languages for Psychonauts 2. Please @Xbox, Invest in localizing their games to more languages, It's your 1st party studio. @XboxP3 @aarongreenberg @mattbooty https://t.co/2zMRTHpl53 pic.twitter.com/qOTMqEBrzL

— Xbox News for Koreans – 네이버 Xbox 정보 카페 (@KoreaXboxnews) August 23, 2021

“Script wise this is the largest game we’ve ever made and adding even one extra language would take a lot of work and a lot of extra budget that we currently do not have. To add languages that use entirely different alphabets and have other considerations is an even bigger job still.

“We may get that chance, and we really really hope we do, but we can’t make any promises, and we also would not be able to do so in time for launch.”

On Twitter, many are laying the blame at the feet of Microsoft. Double Fine is a first-party developer for Microsoft, so any additional funding for localisation should come from Microsoft.

Psychonauts 2 is a 3D platformer in which players will explore the minds of characters they encounter to help solve the problems they are dealing with. In our own review, we said, “Sometimes I made the mistake of thinking that a level was putting a visual idea ahead of a mental health concept, but every time I was proven wrong when the set dressing was used to thoughtfully explore a condition that I wasn’t expecting to see represented.”

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