“Regionalism” has turn out to be a watchword for the sport trade in 2025. It is taken two types: the joy over profitable video games made by builders who draw deep from cultural or nationwide influences, and the multi-pronged effort to achieve new audiences in areas like South Korea, Brazil, China, Kenya, and past.
Video games like Sport Science’s Black Fable: Wukong, Sandfall Interactive’s Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and Shift Up’s Stellar Blade have dominated skilled discourse as profitable variations of this phenomenon. There is no one solution to seize the identical lightning in a bottle that these three video games did, however Virtuos CEO Gilles Langourieux has an fascinating proposal for builders who need to department out past their borders: think about growing “region-specific” variations of your video games.
Langourieux shared the concept with us in a dialog at DICE 2025, the place we would been discussing the outsourcing firm’s buy of Umanaïa, Pipeworks, and Abstraction. There was clearly one thing self-serving concerning the pitch: his concept was that builders may faucet into Virtuos’ community of worldwide studios to let native builders create variants of a sport that might enchantment to their buddies and neighbors.
Does the concept have any benefit past filling the coffers of Virtuos and opponents like Key phrases or Pole To Win? Perhaps—however provided that builders can keep away from pandering to gamers and not make compromises that favor authoritarian regimes.
Sport studios have been making regional modifications for many years
Getting ready totally different variations of video games for various areas is something however new. In 1989 builders like Dynamix ready totally different variations of the PC sport MechWarrior for MS-DOS in america and for the PC-98 and Sharp X68000. Simply examine the 2 “mission accomplished” screenshots beneath:
Picture through MobyGames.
The 2 variations have comparable foundations—a profile image of the pilot, related statistics, some taste textual content, and a clan emblem—however there are vast gaps within the UI and artwork path between the 2 photographs.
Picture through MobyGames.
In the meantime in 2025, firms like Krafton have launched regional variants of video games like PUBG Cell in locations like India—typically after the unique model of a sport was banned by native governments. Localized variations of video games like World of Warcraft or Tokyo Mirage Classes™ #FE may see (typically notorious) tweaks to character costumes or dialogue primarily based on native cultural requirements. And there’ve been occasions when builders experimented with story and characters modifications with video games like Nier Replicant‘s worldwide model Nier Gestalt.
Throughout our dialog, Langourieux’s imaginative and prescient of “region-specific” sport model went slightly additional than the extra acquainted strategy these previous examples signify.
Regional variations of video games transcend localization
“If you happen to examine us to the film trade, it is like we have not taken the great and we have saved the dangerous,” Langourieux defined. He’d been in the course of proclaiming that sport builders wanted to pursue shorter manufacturing timelines to match different leisure companies like movie and tv.
“That trade is extraordinarily agile and versatile with how motion pictures are made…we will certainly [create] extra flexibility with how video games are made, as a result of everyone knows you want fewer folks originally of a sport, much more within the center, and fewer on the finish.”
“If you happen to strive to do this with a hard and fast staff, you find yourself with waste or layoffs—often each.” He added that distant and distributed growth pushed by the COVID-19 pandemic makes it simpler for groups to construct flexibility (that’s, if they do not implement strict RTO insurance policies).
His enchantment for agility and adaptability led to the dialogue of regional sport variants. “The dangerous factor concerning the film trade is that…you possibly can solely make one film that is the identical film for everyone. In video games, we’ve the luxurious to make totally different video games for various folks, and too few studios and publishers are absolutely leveraging that.” He mentioned he is seen extra builders in Asia like Garena and Nexon reap the benefits of this apply than within the West.
At first it sounded as if he was saying studios ought to function like say, Asobo Studio, which makes Microsoft Flight Simulator and the Plague Story sequence. The 2 sequence goal very totally different audiences. “My thought is that A Plague Story: Innocence doesn’t must be the very same sport for folks within the US, in Europe, or in Asia,” Langourieux mentioned.
He rapidly adopted up that A Plague Story won’t be an awesome instance right here, and that he was primarily pondering of massive finances reside service video games—however there are many reside service practices creeping again into the world of single-player offline video games. You’ve gotten the Early Entry mannequin which turns video games like 9 Kings and Schedule I into often up to date video games with new options. You’ve gotten premium video games like Vampire Survivors doing model crossovers with sequence like Castlevania.
It is hypothetically potential that with the appropriate staff, a developer may launch content material higher catered to an area viewers’s wants.
“You’ve gotten the rising PC set up and cellular set up base in newer economies like Southeast Asia and South America,” he mentioned. “And that creates alternatives to customise content material in an effort to enhance the probability of success of the sport and earn abroad market share.”
This is not a risk-free proposition. Make a regional change with out anybody from the realm on the event staff may result in inadvertently offensive content material or come off as pandering. And the query of how far builders are keen to go in areas the place LGBTQ people, ladies, and ethnic minorities are restricted may create sudden moral quandaries just like these we have already seen by regional modifications to video games in locations the place depictions of homosexuality are banned or restricted.
However Langourieux has a degree. The pliability of digital property and downloadable updates means the sport trade has extra company in globalization than different standard mediums. The primary remaining query: can this apply profit builders not chasing recurring income in the reside service enterprise?
