Re: HRPG Heaven X-Mas Gift
Well, I don't know the whole story, but before my time there was apparently a falling out between Starke and others on ULMF. The issues with this thread in particular is certain people's animosity that Starke created a forum of his own named, HRPG Heaven, and made it a private forum. One of the mechanisms to access the forum was a $50 donation. When this happened, some of the more active translators left ULMF and joined the new forum, which rankled people even more because they no longer had access to their translations.
Ultimately, it reeks a bit of entitlement to me. Anyone should be free to create a forum however they please. If they want to create one that has a paywall in front of it, more power to them. They cannot make it popular by themselves. Additionally, translating is a lot of work, and those translators should be free to upload their work however they see fit. They are not obligated to offer it free or upload it to ULMF.
The trolls can definitely ruin it for everyone, and I can vouch that many of the translators were pretty pissed about this thread last year when it devolved into a bashing Starke and HRPG Heaven, as though they should be obligated to allow everyone access to their forum. I know that most people were appreciative and most people on ULMF are awesome, but sometimes the vocal minority can ruin things for everyone.
"Vocal minority" doesn't really describe it well. There were like 3 people on this entire thread who were actually complaining and there were much more vocal people who were defending Starke. Most people were just happy to take what they can get.
The complainers weren't exactly wrong though. What Starke is doing/did does "steal" translators, split the community, and decrease access to content. You can chalk it up to "entitlement" (and most of the complaints do indeed reek of entitlement) but they're still facts, facts that most people aren't exactly happy about even if they don't blame translators for doing what they're doing.
I don't don't sympathize too much with translators who complain about receiving too much requests, as it comes with the territory. You can ignore whatever you want, sure it might make you look like an ass to those who don't understand (as is the case with celebrities ignoring fans) but this should be expected if you know your work is gonna be used by a lot of people.
Translators,editors, etc can charge whatever they want for their work, if it weren't for the fact that they're charging for illegal activity, I wouldn't have any issues at all. However, it does make me a little sad; I'm one of those who pirate my H-games (which I sure accounts for the far majority of people here) and I would much rather start paying for the game itself first before paying for the translations.
I do understand the importance of supporting works that you like and I'm perfectly happy to, and do, pay for visual novels I like and fan-translations of them. I would be utterly bummed out if the translation community of visual novels deteriorate anymore than it already has, so I can at least understand why people might be upset if they feel Starke is doing the same to the H-game community.
