XSEED used scripts extracted and compiled by NightWolve from the original PC-Engine versions. Search for "Boycott XSEED" on ystopia.net forums. There's also information at the MagicEngine.com forums (search for "XSEED").

I, personally, will not buy any XSEED games!

lol I'm dumb.

Apparently it is bullshit whining. nevermind.

Actually this is pretty much a lie. Nightwolve went off the deep end after his attempt to put the Oath in Felghana fan-translation behind a paywall failed spectacularly. XSeeD bought the translated scripts that were the basis of their own releases from the guy who did the actual work translating the text of of Chronicles and Oath, Jeff Nussbaum, and Nightwolve thought he should be in on the deal for the translated text because he built the extraction tools.

Nightwolve is a crank with a personal grudge against Tom and Jeff, nothing more than that, and his online presence is now only really notable for the sheer length of his rants. Nightwolve is considered a joke by pretty much anyone else in the Ys online community outside of Ysutopia.

The text that serves as the basis for the XSeeD release of Origin was bought from other translators.

Wait, what, do you have a link? I could use a dose of online drama.

Can we get this RockmanX.413 banned from posting reviews? Bitching about an internal controversy and saying nothing of the game is not a review.

I've issued a report to the site admin team to bring it to their attention and see if they'd like to take action.

I did some research as OP suggested, and it's hard to root for any side in their argument. If what Nightwolve writes is true, XSEED should gave him some credit, maybe even monetary compensation. But... his rants are really awful. He warns that there is much text written and you need to read it all to understand the issue. Which is a lie, HE makes it too long by ranting about stuff that has no consequence on the issue. Without that, it could be summarized in a paragraph or two. Last time I checked, being porn star or posting pictures of your privates has no influence on whether you are an ass or a competent translator (no idea if those accusations are true, I didn't try to follow them). And he evidently didn't mind while he was friends with the translator. In other words, his rants are full of ad hominem attacks now that it suits him. And everytime I see such fallacies attempted, my gut tells me that the poster is an ass himself.

And if all he did was to write text extraction tool and did nothing for the translation itself, then his claim is pretty small to begin with. I doubt XSEED would translate and release pirated copy. That means they have contractual access to the source code and original text resources, and therefore no need for any kind of extraction tool. Sure, without Nightwolve's extractor it would take them longer to release, there would be no fan translations to base it on, so it would be nice of them to reward him in some way... But demanding it in the way he does is way over being reasonable.

And those are my feeling based only on Nightwolve's own posts, without seeing any official position from XSEED. So, I don't think I will be joining that boycott (not that I could anyway, until they release Trails SC).

The whole thing played out over the course of about six or more years on a few different forums- it's hard to get a hold of everything now, but the announcement that Deuce's (Jeff's) work would be bought came in about 2010 and is easy to find. XSeeD's deal was exclusively for the translation itself, and Nightwolve's role in the translations he has been involved in (Xak III, Dawn of Ys, etc.) has always been credited as hacking and programming end rather than the actual Japanese to English translation work. XSeeD didn't need what Nightwolve brought to the table. So, three years later Nightwolve launched his (fortunately unsuccessful) "boycott" of XSeeD, and started referring to Jeff as B.J. DeuceBag, as well as Tom in varied but equally scatalogical terms, claiming that XSeeD was a "criminal company" for cutting him out.

Yeah I spent the morning looking this up instead of training. but its kinda funny and sad.
largely sad.

I was about to comment on it in depth, but two previous users already summed up what there was to say about the issue. I second that, the funny thing is you can get all important facts from NightWolve's own rants (including the email responses he got from Xseed's CEO), not at any point he states he had anything to do with translating the original text to which he obviously also has no rights.

The OP kind of stinks of libel and should probably be removed.

I still remember what happened to Re-Volt...

If the Ys games are removed from GOG again, because of some ridiculous online drama, imma have to smack a bitch. >:(

Pretty much this. Sometimes the communities (or some individuals with a bit of influence in said communities) do more harm than good to the games they supposedly care about. If something like what happens to Re-Volt happens to the Ys games, I'm seriously going to break stuff.

If people cared more about the games themselves than some monetary compensation they feel entitled to, perhaps the games wouldn't be removed from digital distributors like, say, GOG, and more people could buy and appreciate them -- legally.

It's Nightwolve, and he is touchy if you get the spelling wrong. Making fun of his nickname just for it being broken English is a bit childish, I have seen worse. His broken behaviour, on the other hand...

Agree with rest of the post, I wanted to write something similar but it was long enough already, and didn't want it to sound like I want people to work for free. If it was me, I'd just release the tool under WTFPL and be happy it got some use.

First of all, I think the title of this thread should be renamed. The translator was compensated for his translation. XSeed didn't steal anything.

Second of all, yes, the original translation would have taken longer without that extractor tool, but in the end XSeed paid for the filled-in translation template. (which was made without that extraction tool) XSeed has nothing to do with the means that indirectly contributed to the fan translation upon which it was based. They don't owe money to whatever company published the books that the translator used to teach himself Japanese or to whatever teacher helped the translator learn Japanese. They don't owe money to Microsoft for producing Excel, which is used to fill in the translation templates. Need I go on?

Sure, credit would have been nice, but it's not something XSeed can include in the game. That's because the creation of that extraction tool essentially involves hacking of the original game's source code and Falcom wouldn't have been pleased to see the guy who hacked one of their games get thanked in the credits of the localized version of that game. Not sending the lawyers after him was a given, but officially thanking him for hacking their code would probably be a smitch too far for Falcom.