> I'm lucky enough to live in an English-speaking country, but I'm sure that if I lived in a country that typically sees long delays before localization, I'd find a way to get it early.
Localization isn't just bureaucratic nonsense that was conjured up to aggravate gamers in foreign countries - the games actually need to be translated to the local language.
As for if you were living in one of those countries as an expat, as you suggest, that's a very small market and not worth pursuing.
But yet they pirate the games anyway. My guess is that you'll find that a large percentage of "gamers" in non-English speaking countries speak English well enough to understand most games and don't want to wait the 6+ months required to translate the game to their local tongue when they could be playing online against US players.
This was especially true a few years back, when some publishers wouldn't release games in the UK until the "European" translation was finished!
It depends. A shooter? Yeah, piece of cake. An RPG? Sorry, but depending on the country no that many people could understand it well enough to follow the story.
TV Series do get around the moment they get on a torrent site, but many many people can follow them thanks to the subtitles provided by fellow viewers. If not they would have a harder time following them.
When I said that most games are not translated I kind of focused on my country (Sweden). If you are from Germany or France you probably have another view of it.
Point is that localization really isn't the only thing that delays a launch in, for instance, Sweden. I guess we have to wait for it to be localized to other parts of Europe before we get to play it in English (or German, but I'd guess that few Swedes prefer German over English). Which is just stupid.
And if it really is translated to Swedish you'd pick English anyway (exception: if you are a group of friends it can be quite fun to laugh at the poor translation).
In a country where you don't dub movies/TV you get quite good at understanding English at a young age and in such a country I don't really think gamers would prefer a localized version anyway.
It is (just bureaucratic nonsense) if they aren't willing to sell a foreign version of the game to those who want it.
Steam uses region codes, much like DVDs, to deny you the language of your choice - because they screw with prices by area and don't want to lose this ability.
Even Steam's DRM is too much. If for whatever reason they disable your account or some of your games there's nothing you can do. Your games are just gone. As if someone came in and cut up your DVDs. Except that if you had had DVDs you could just re-download them and your keys would still work.
Localization isn't just bureaucratic nonsense that was conjured up to aggravate gamers in foreign countries - the games actually need to be translated to the local language.
As for if you were living in one of those countries as an expat, as you suggest, that's a very small market and not worth pursuing.