My point was that the rights for the localizations might be held by someone other than whoever the fuck owns the rights to the actual game at any given moment for a number of reasons, because more legal issues is exactly what we need around here. The original translator (who could've been killed in an accident with a cow or something, further complicating things) may still have the rights if that is what the original contract said; perhaps the rights to the localization were transferred to a translation agency who then held on to them and only gave BioWare permission to use them within very limited constraints; perhaps the contracts are altogether unclear on the subject, or something roughly along those lines.

In case you're wondering, it actually makes some sense for a translator to try to hold on to the copyright for their work even though it might create problems to someone else down the line, although it is difficult to say whether or not it will pay off when the decision is being made. Say you translated a game that was only going to be sold through the developer's website, and whoever writes the contract explicitly says that the translation can be used for the game distributed through the developers' website. You, the translator, ask if they would mind if you held the copyright to your work, and they say yes if you agree to a smaller paycheck. "Fair enough", you say. Word-of-mouth then makes the game a massive hit, and the devs decide to sell it on Steam, GamersGate, Desura and what have you as well. Since the devs originally secured the permission to distribute your translated version only through their own website, they'll have to purchase the rights again, and this time they make sure it covers all online stores. Six months later they decide to do a limited amount of retail versions as well - and you can probably see where this is going now - and they'll buy the permission again, or perhaps they'll just buy the entire copyright from you and be done with it. I'm not saying that translators are selfish, greedy fucks, because 1) this isn't all that common, I suppose, because individual translators keep the rights fairly rarely 2) a couple of hundred or thousand dollars aren't going to make a big dent in the economy of any decent-sized business, especially if they've got a runaway hit in their hands, 3) if the translation is good, the devs know that they'll be better off paying you again than risking a poor translation from someone else.

We're not arguing, I promise you. Rights are tricksy things, doubly so with the D&D franchise. Maybe I wasn't clear enough.

That's a shame. I really feel for you. I guess your best option is to leave GOG then. Good luck.

Quick question. In the past there have been games I bought that were only available for local sale in the native language, or some regional translation. Final Fantasy 13 was such a game, in Europe we only got the english voiceacting. Many games in the past have been like this. The Cryo games had voiceacting in many languages, but I can't recall any of them including them all in the same box. Why would you expect GOG to offer all those languages when the game was never available like that before?

It would be nice if they offered languagepacks at additional cost though I guess.

Muti language options is one of the best features of games. I'd buy 10 more or so, if they were in different languages. As yet, 0. Half the games I got were mainly because they had several language options, or because they had expansion packs. Then they turned out to not provide the alternate ones. Some of the games that were written for Linux, and run like junk on Windows don't have the Linux version. It's as though they want to provide only the most dulled down funcitonless versions of games. They put up the low expectation versions of games, so they can put up dumpy quality new games at high prices. The only use left for GoG seems to be to complain about GoG, or wait for one of their overpriced games that doesn't sell to go on sale. Posible se locando oltre avinue aquisitare versione de giocci, listare distributare avalibila.

I'll leave a hurl of bickering behind on the way.

Actually it's the french version that I found insulting. I had ceased to play the game (bought at full price) mostly for that. I am currently playing it in english at last, thanks to gog, and it's way more tolerable.