Muv-Luv visual novels on Steam

I mean, not reallllly. I mean, there are fansubbers who do it for free. To have, however, professional grade translation and engine modernization for these games might cost, if not quite this much, almost this much.

Edit; It also looks like they're PC porting the PS3 versions? Not sure why they're doing that, but I suppose it's probably better than the archaic PC version.

I guess it depends - for example if you want some quality voiceacting as well the price probably skyrocket - especially as these kind of games contain a shitload of text so shitload of lines to record as well.

Yes, it does (depending on the game, A LOT MORE). These games are huge, it's gonna take a while to get them translated, too. If you do this for a living (like I do), you'll need to get paid for all those hours. Everything will need to be proofread by another person. Also, project management and implementation (there will be new bugs!) aren't free either. All of that costs money. And testing, of course. Can't get rid of the bugs without testing (though they could get that for free in Early Access)

To give you a frame of reference: I translate from English into German, which is probably faster than Japanese into English. On average, I'm expected to finish about 300-350 words per hour, so up to 2500 words per work day. This project has millions of words, so that's several months' (maybe even a year's) pay for several people.

They're using Amaterasu Translations' existing translations for the games (with permission, of course) so requesting that much money for "translation" is disingenuous, to say the least. I suspect they don't actually need quite as much money as they claim they do. However, there ARE still licensing costs associated with releasing the game officially rather than just doing a fan translation, so that likely factors into the amount they're asking for. Since people were willing to pay and the Kickstarter got funded extremely quickly, I suppose none of this really matters, anyway. What's done is done.

One thing I can say for the Muv-Luv series is that it is a pretty big deal, so it makes sense that people were willing to pay so much. It's well-known for a pretty huge bait-and-switch they did with the tone well into the story, which can be seen just by looking at the difference between these two games on Greenlight. Just reading it is a massive undertaking, especially because you have to be interested in two completely different genres to get full enjoyment out of it.

It's Japanese voice actors only.

They thought about a stretch goal to hire English voice actors for some foreign characters in the game but it seems they scrapped that idea.

Yay

the anime for Schwarzesmarken is so sad T.T