Thygra wrote:
Hello Matija,
thank you very much for your interest in our games and especially in Istanbul! We appreciate the time and effort you want to put in fostering the community in terms of translating our rules into your language.
But there comes our "but": It seems that you didn't ask Pegasus Spiele for permission! The rulebook clearly shows that Pegasus Spiele has the copyright and it says:
"All rights reserved. Reprinting or publishing of the rule book, game components or illustrations is prohibited without prior permission."
So we are wondering why you published your translation without asking us before! Please explain, thanks!
Please remove your translation from the internet immediately! This is a violence of our copyright and it could hurt our efforts to sell the game to a Croatian publisher!
Thank you very much for you understanding! If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask me in person: [email protected]
Best regards,
Andre Bronswijk
(Product Manager for Pegasus Spiele, Germany)
Shich wrote:
Hi Andre!
I've removed the rulebook immediately. I'm sorry for crossing your copyright. I thought that the original translator already asked for permission when he started translating. The whole point of translating is to make the game accesible to more gamers. But I never understood the reason why minority of companies act like this.
Basically you want to say that it's better to prevent most of the croatian families from reading localised rulebook which could increase the sales of your german edition of game in Croatia, because there is theoretical chance of localising game in our language in future?
I'm really curious about this subject and I would really appreciate your answer.
Matija
Thygra wrote:
Hi Matija,
For you, it may look like a promotion. But there are some other aspects. Each free translation could harm the efforts to find a partner for a localization!
One example: Two years ago, Pegasus got an agreement with an Italian publisher about an Italian version of a game. But then suddenly an Italian translation of this game has been uploaded at BGG and at an Italian gamer's forum - without our permission. The Italian publisher told us, that now gamers would order English versions from other countries and saturate his market. He withdrawed from our agreement and did not publish the Italian localization.
So you see, such a translation is able to damage our business. And that's why Pegasus usually does not allow to upload translations to the internet.
You might argue that it is very unlikely to find a partner for a Croatian version. That's perhaps correct. But if we allow the publishing of Croatian rules, how could we then not allow the publishing of other rules, for example Spanish or Greek? Allowing it once would be a leading case for others.
For Istanbul, we really have hopes to find partners in all areas. For example, we just closed an agreement about a Romanian version. So it is still possible to have a Croatian version in the future.
One other problem: You used the original artwork and layout. So it looks like an official rules translation. But it isn't. We will never allow translations using the original layout. Perhaps in the future, we will sometimes allow a translation just in plain text, black on white. But currently not for Istanbul, because Istanbul is a very important brand for Pegasus, not only today, but in the future too.
I hope this explanation is helpful!?
Best,
Andre