‘Wait for me, my Czech friend’: Japanese dev adds Czech localization just for the one Steam user who wishlisted his game in the Czech Republic

The Czech Republic and Japan share an unexpected international friendship, and it’s thanks to the profound, unifying magic of baseball. Japanese baseball fans adopted the Czech national baseball team as their foster favorite after the two countries faced off in the 2023 World Baseball Cup. The mostly amateur Czech team lost 2-10, but not before charming both Japanese fans and players with an early lead—and not before Czech pitcher Ondrej Satoria, an electrician by day, struck out the legendary Shohei Ohtani.

This week, Japanese solo developer Eba Game is channeling that international spirit of baseball and friendship. His game Ball Boy Simulator is due to launch on Steam later this month, but he’s adding last-minute Czech language support (via Kotaku)—all for the sake of the one user he noticed had wishlisted his game from the Czech Republic.

“One day, when I checked my wishlist, I saw that just one person from the Czech Republic had signed up. I know from the recent World Baseball Championships how much respect the Czech Republic has for baseball and Japan,” Eba Game said on X, via machine translation. “So for the sake of this one baseball fan in the Czech Republic, I implemented Czech language support. Wait for me, my Czech friend.”

While Eba Game might be motivated by the unifying force that is baseball, Ball Boy Simulator seems like it’s depicting a somewhat… less wholesome image of what the sport can entail. The Steam description says it’s a psychological horror depiction of “the oppression and unreasonable treatment experienced in high school baseball clubs, based on the real-life experiences of the developer and those around them.”

The Steam listing also offers a hint at how Eba Game might be intending to implement late Czech language support: Ball Boy Simulator’s AI disclosure features the brow-furrowing disclaimer that “AI-generated content was used for some asset textures, portions of the background music, development-related assistance and technical questions, and parts of the game’s social media promotional materials.”

I’ll confess I’m not clear on the international spirit of baseball and friendship’s stance on generative AI in game development. We’ll have to wait and see what level of localization quality Ball Boy Simulator’s lone Czech admirer can expect.