The recent change in the delegation of authority by the big American font company, Monotype, has increased costs by 50 times in one breath, coupled with a strict ceiling on the number of users, which has left a large number of small game developers unable to afford, and has begun to look for alternatives, as well as for an unprecedented “missing” crisis in Japan’s game interface.
The original name Monotype acquired the Japanese font company Fontworks in 2023, although the company was acquired, but the programme remained the same, with the “LETS” programme, which is widely used by the game world, requiring only 60,000 yen per year, and approximately RMB 2,700 to use a variety of Japanese scripts.
However, Monotype recently cancelled the program, while the cheapest cost up to 3.2 million yen per year, equivalent to 145,000 yuan yuan, equals 53 times the cost of words alone! This is so expensive for some small game developers.
But for a large game company, Monotype’s food looks are no good, because the program has a “number limit” and when the number of players is greater than 25,000, it has to enter into a commercial contract with a font company, i.e., a separate cost contract, which means that a large game company will also have to pay a significant annual authorization fee for these fonts.
Nintendo’s Super Mario Brothers has long used Fontworks.
Since the development of Japanese scripts covers pseudonyms, pseudonyms, Chinese characters, the development of fonts is as large and complex as in Chinese, and it is very difficult to find suitable alternatives at a given time, especially if you happen to use a game with hard-worded characters and switch to free or other manufacturer fonts, you may also encounter a situation where the vocabulary is incomplete and missing.
And many industries have long used Fontworks’ fonts, such as the Fate / Grand Order, The Anecdotal Series, the Magic Hunter Series, etc., and even if they can buy other authorizations, conversion is a huge process, and changes in fonts will make UI layouts and readings substantially different, and old players are not likely to accept this sudden change.
Now Japan has complained on social networking site X that it considers Monotype to be commercial. After the break-up, chickens were killed for eggs, and some small developers were seeking cooperation from Japanese producers who also had deep roots in Japan.
But for smaller teams, 2026 will begin with a serious font crisis. Since the Windows preset font embedded game is subject to an additional fee, without a more economical solution from the manufacturer, the shift to a free open-source font will expose yourself to awkward situations such as incomplete writing, inconsistent fonts and missing words.