[Update] Spanish version lacks QA

By Los Archivos de Arkham, in Arkham Horror: The Card Game

Ah s**t, here we go again.

Please forgive me if I sound angrier this time around, but you might understand why if you continue reading. I you don't have much time, there's a TL;DR in the end.

Hi again. About a month ago, I made this post detailing how FFG Spain screwed up in the spanish version of both The Circle Undone cycle and Return to the Path to Carcosa. These products are riddled with typos in both player and encounter cards. The RttPtC encounter AND act card typos are especially egregious, since they pretty much delete all of the important changes introduced by the "Return to" versions of the first two scenarios. Note that we're not blaming the translator, even if he/she made a mistake, all of the typos were found merely hours after the products were for sale, so they could have been easily spotted, pointed out and corrected by a QA team, which we're pretty much assuming does not exist.

So, as you might imagine, the spanish community complained... a lot. Like, a lot a lot, as in pages of threads in the spanish forums complaining about the typos and demanding a solution.

And after seven months complaining about the typos (since they started in The Circle Undone), FFG Spain delighted us with the translation of the Visions in your Mind news post [ English Version / Spanish Version ], which, for english-speakers, introduced the Visions in your mind encounter cards, a substitution for the Voiced in your Head cool Hidden encounter cards. These cards are supposed to be four slightly different versions of the same card, so, even if the four cards look almost the same (the only change would be the background color), the text in each one DOES change. It just happens that in the spanish version, three of these four cards have the exact same text, and lo and behold, the cards were shown... with typos... in an official FFG news post... like this .

We can see how the middle card and the one on the right have the word "movimiento" in their text, which means that both of these cards ask you to take a move action during your turn. But in the english news post, we can see how the middle card asks you to take a resource action during your turn. So, yeah, now we have typos even in official posts. I imagine these were not corrected for the post because right now the product they're selling has these typos, so they must be covering their backs.

As you might have already guessed, this is about the time the spanish forums began to burn. Lots of us sent replacement requests to Asmodee, since FFG just wouldn't say anything about the subject. We had no news about this... until yesterday.

Yesterday, around 9 p.m., we had an official response from an FFG Crew moderator in the forums, which I will translate for all of you:

" Hi everyone.

I'm sincerely very sorry about all of this, and understand your anger, frustration, and that you crave to punch other people's faces.

As of now, I've uploaded all of the typos so that, whoever wants to, can download the corrected version and print it themselves but I'm afraid there won't be a further solution to this subject.

You are free to value this solution as you see fit. I'll be around the forums to answer in the best possible way.

Thank you for your patience. "

It's nice to, after seven months complaining, finally know that they're not only NOT going to replace the mistranslated cards, but that they expect dissatisfied customers to PRINT the corrected cards. I, for example, play with the encounter cards unsleeved (sacrilegious, right?), are they expecting me to shuffle a piece of paper with the cards? Do they think no one will notice that one of the cards isn't a card? Do they want us to print stickers of the corrected text for the card? Even if we printed the cards with professional cardstock, the slightest change in cardstock grading, ink or printer quality will make the corrected cards stick out, just look at what happened when the first two PoD scenarios were released!

Does anyone seriously think this solution is reasonable? The laziness and lack of professionalism shown by FFG Spain has already made a dent in the community. We know of numerous members of the community that will stop buying any product until this is properly resolved. Lots of people have already started to sell the whole game. Some people will try to buy the game's english version. In general, we're pissed.

As of now, we're still trying to get the cards replaced, but we're now directly speaking with Asmodee. This post's purpose is merely to inform the international community, but we appreciate any answer, support, solution or advice you guys could give us.

Thank you very much for reading, have a nice day everyone :).

TL;DR: TCU and RttPtC have typos in the spanish version. The typos were shown in the spanish translation of Visions in Your Mind news post. Spanish community is angry. The official response from FFG has been "I'm sorry, here's a pdf with the corrected text, please print it yourself". Spanish community is now angrier.

Edited by Los Archivos de Arkham
Typos, ironic isn't it?

Until FFG Spain doesn't send the corrected cards to us, I will not buy anything more of FFG. This situation is ridiculous for those that have spent about 700 € in this game.

Furthermore, we do not understand why the incorrect cards in the Essex County Express were duly replaced but these new misprints will not.

The Spanish players request a better service from Asmodee. Our money is as valid as the French, German or American players money when buying your goods, therefore we request the same quality service.

The problem is not only in this product, there is a very high percentage of games with typos. To this we can add the lack of support or FAQs making unplayable games causing the unjustified purchase in Spanish. We have to consult other blogs to be informed of the correct information about the rules and other mechanics.