After the huge increase in revenues in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic, the global gaming market started to go back to its normal growth in 2022. The total global game market revenue in 2022 was 184.4 billion USD. The gaming sector is quite big, and China and the USA take the lead in the charts, but today, we would like to talk about a very promising market: Türkiye, also known as Turkey, and Turkish game localization.
Türkiye has a population of 85 million people, and 81% of the adult population play mobile games. The estimated number of players in Türkiye is more than 44 million. This is more than half of the population. Mostly, players spend their time playing mobile games, and the mobile gaming industry is quite big in Türkiye compared to PC and console games.
Türkiye’s game revenue dropped in 2022, but the main reason for this was the loss of the strength of the TL against the Dollar. Players still want to play games and pay for games, but their purchasing power has decreased, which in turn led to a decrease in terms of gaming revenue. However, this does not mean that Türkiye is not a promising gaming market because the gaming revenue in Türkiye was 625 million USD in 2022; this is still a big number.
On the left, you can see the most common languages used in Steam, a very popular gaming platform. Turkish is the tenth most common language. This statistic alone shows the number of players who speak Turkish (and maybe only Turkish), which brings me to my next point: the importance of Turkish game localization.
As a game developer/publisher, if you are interested in the MENA region, it might be smart to start with the Turkish market. Although we implied this many times before, what is the best way to enter a new market? Game localization. English into Turkish game localization is easier compared to localization into some other languages because the alphabet doesn’t change. There are some minor differences, but other than these, Türkiye also uses the Latin alphabet. This makes the UX/UI design process easier.
As a developer, you might think that English is the lingua franca and that you don’t need to localize your game. Yet as we mentioned in one of our previous blog posts, even if people can understand English, they want content in their own language. According to EF, Türkiye’s English Proficiency Index is low, ranking 64 out of 111 countries. This means that Turkish game localization is a must if you are considering entering this market.
It is extremely important that Turkish game localization is done by a native linguist who is knowledgeable about both the source culture and the Turkish culture. As with every culture, there are some sensitivities about certain points (religion is one of them), and as a gaming company, you wouldn’t want to offend any player. We have a special blog post written by one of our Turkish game localization specialists, you can go ahead and read that to gain more insight into Turkish game localization. By getting help from a dedicated localization company and Turkish game localization specialists, you avoid the risk of getting a bad reputation among Turkish players.
Written by
Ecenaz Batur
Marketing Specialist
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