open-source fonts

Don't they already exist? Work already done makes no work needed.

I don't mean to agree with that other person hating on kanji, but if they're going to take on the task of making a new font they could potentially alter the writing system somewhat to simplify some things and/or extend versatility of some characters. A new evolution would be exciting.

鬱 has 29 strokes. People just write うつbecause they can understandably not be assed to write all that. So why not, if you have to go through the task of making an entire font, replace it with something people might actually write? You could come up with a new character in the tradition of hiragana's origins, something uniquely Japanese.

This can quite appropriately be assigned as the top comment to sooo many articles/posts.

Free for commercial use?

I'm guessing the problem is they want a relatively unique font to avoid looking the same as other games, and then once they've chosen their font they're pretty much stuck with it unless they're willing to change the look of their game (for live-service games at least). A number of the fonts there might work for new stuff though.

They own a font, which is a way of writing the letters. Wondering though, how many Japanese fonts are there?

I remember back during the NFT hype cycle how people were claiming they'd patented particular shades of color and were selling rights to them on the blockchain.

I gotta wonder who even enforces this shit. Where do you go to register a font-type you claim you own that looks shockingly similar to a font people have been using since the printing press was invented? So much of this just feels like vexatious litigation. "Ah, yes, that's actually my 'a' and you need to pay me $20k to use it".

They don't own "literal letters."

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.

Insulin in the US?

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.

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

Font and alphabet are not the same thing.

Obviously nobody can or should own the letter E, but you pretend that the font creator's work adds nothing to that.

Someone had to do the work to make it look nice, beyond just being an E.

I’m sure they will over time, but I would guess there’s a surprising number of potential issues with any font variance. That’s the kind of thing that can appear hardware-dependently, like certain high/low-res monitors showing fonts too big, too small, or even not at all. So any bug fixes that have come through on the subject will rely on user bug reports.

If it was as simple as the font swapping feature seen in Word, I’m sure it wouldn’t be a big deal.

Japanese fonts are much harder to make than English fonts. Thousands of characters and all that.

Kanji has over two thousand typical characters. Feel free to contribute several to open-source fonts.