Comment by crooked-v

Comment by crooked-v 6 hours ago

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The bigger issue here isn't the pricing, it's the 25,000 max users added to the licenses, which means that anyone who can genuinely afford these fonts isn't actually allowed to use them.

Edit: This paragraph was incorrect:

    The fonts affected apparently include ones like the main Japanese language
    font used by the game Genshin Impact, which has 2.8 million daily users
    worldwide (no idea of the Japanese user count specifically, but I'm sure
    it's over 25,000).
I was wrong about Genshin Impact there. That said, I'm sure you can see the effect with, well, literally any video game or app that uses one of those fonts (including internationally with localization options). Either you're too small to afford it, or you can afford it but you have too many users.
yborg 6 hours ago

Genshin is produced by a Chinese company, MiHoYo. And I think Monotype will have a much harder time trying to strongarm a PRC-based company if they decide to try this there.

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  • alephnerd 5 hours ago

    > Monotype will have a much harder time trying to strongarm a PRC-based company if they decide to try this there

    Monotype has a Chinese subsidiary [0] which has worked with Chinese champions like Tencent [1] and Alibaba [2].

    As long as a foreign vs Chinese business dispute doesn't involve a national champion or a very politically connected Chinese firm (or the foreign company made a partnership with a politically connected partner) the dispute is somewhat fair.

    While China's leadership is trying to build self-sufficiency, it is also still trying to attract foreign companies to China and prevent an FDI outflow [3], and that requires some level of impartiality in contract disputes. China is not as economically isolated as Russia is today - though even Russian authorities tend to only use the heavy hammer against American and European companies as can be seen with the continued operation of Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, Vietnamese, and Indian firms in Russia despite the risk of sanctions.

    [0] - https://cn.monotype-asia.com/contact-us

    [1] - https://www.monotype.com/resources/case-studies/tencent-expa...

    [2] - https://www.monotype.com/resources/case-studies/alibaba-grou...

    [3] - https://www.gov.cn/zhengce/zhengceku/202507/content_7032625....

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