Localized Games Voiceover in 2025: Are You Reaching Your Players?
Localization has become a standard across the industry over the last two decades. In 2025, it’s rare to see any major titles release without some localized languages, and even minor titles typically include at least a standard range. It’s a bit of a no-brainer; it brings in new players and lets you access markets to dramatically improve your revenue prospects.
But has Localized Voiceover (often called “Localized Audio”) kept up with general localization progress? Well, we looked at the top 2025 Steam Releases (so far) and analyzed their support for localized audio. Our findings might surprise you….
What is Localized Voiceover?
Localized Audio or Voiceover, as the name suggests, is audio re-recorded to be appropriate in one of the title’s localized languages. This of course can only be made for games that include full native language audio, and those that have localized languages.
Typically, localized audio is only made for major languages or for markets that publishers are specifically targeting with the release. Localized audio is almost always supported by localized text, however there are occasional exceptions to this, such as specific games including Arabic audio but not Arabic localized text (usually due to Arabic text reading right-to-left, which games can sometimes struggle to implement).
Why do games choose to include or avoid Localized VO?
Localized Voiceover is one of the most direct ways of making players feel that the game was truly made for them. It’s the ultimate localization goal in games, at least currently, and helps truly immerse players in your game’s world.
But Localized VO isn’t cheap. Typically, adding localized VO for just a couple of languages can eclipse the budget required for text localization. Many developers and publishers stick with English only VO due to this cost. This is likely due to an understanding that localizing VO for all languages would be cost-prohibitive, so instead they sometimes avoid it completely.
Another reason that some companies may avoid localized audio is the additional testing required in each language. While testing VO is included within regular LQA testing, it does require additional attention from testers compared to a game without localized VO, increasing testing time required. Localizing VO will also require the localization of scripts.
It’s worth looking at some of your favorite publishers’ releases to see the different approaches to localization and localized VO. For example, CD Projekt Red and EA often include a wide variety of localized VO in their new releases.
The effect of localized VO is extremely noticeable in games, particularly as game narratives and dialogue continue to mature and become more complex. When listening to non-native English-speaking players, the benefits are obvious:
Our Analysis: Methodology
To allow us to capture a snapshot of the industry, we looked at the Top 100 Steam Releases of 2025 that aligned with the following requirements:
- Titles must have released in 2025
- Titles must include some Text Localization
- Titles must include Full Native Audio
- In this instance, “Native” means the game’s original language. This primarily includes English and Japanese, with instances of French and Simplified Chinese.
- This requirement removes games that don’t have native audio, which would eliminate any chance of localized audio.
- “Top” games were selected by number of Steam reviews received since release.
- Games included cover varying scopes e.g AAA, AA, III, and Indie.
Using these requirements, we built a list of the top 100 games, ensuring all aligned to this initial methodology. These requirements reduce the chance of false data or inaccurate findings, allowing us to view a top-level cross-section of examples of modern releases.
So, what does the array of localized VO look like across this year’s top releases? What can that tell us about the current state of localized VO support?
Our Analysis: Top-Level Data
Of the top 100 games of 2025 analyzed, only 43 had any localized audio. These games can be further categorized by the number of localized audio languages:
The most notable statistic from this analysis is that 57 of this year’s top Steam releases that have localization, and Native VO, had no localized VO. From this we can ascertain that localized VO uptake is not close to the same level as text localization. As mentioned, this is likely primarily due to the somewhat prohibitive costs of adding localized VO, and the decisions that come with it about which languages to focus on.
In the below chart you can see a breakdown of the 43 games analyzed that did include localized VO for at least one language:
Top 100 2025 Releases with Any Localized VO
The clearest takeaways from this data are that:
- Including One Localized VO Language is the most common option.
- Including Two or Three Localized Languages is also fairly standard, at 16% each.
- If games are expanding past three localized VO languages, they typically include six or more instead of four or five.
- It’s also more likely for games to include seven or eight languages than four or five.
- If games include more than six total Languages, it’s more common for them to include Nine than seven or eight.
From the data it’s apparent that localized VO in games is not a linear progression. We don’t see a consistent fall from One to Nine languages, instead it’s clear that publishers are likely selecting their VO languages based on specific packages or for targeting specific markets. We would have expected to see more regularity in percentages, dropping further as we reach higher numbers of languages. Instead, we can see that very few games include Four or Five languages in particular, often instead leaning towards three at most, or going up to Six, or even Nine.
Looking more closely at titles with only one localized language also reveals some intriguing differences to what you might expect. The 18 titles with one language can be broken down as:
Many of these titles only have their localized language voiceover due to being developed in that country. For example. Japanese benefits from strong releases of Japanese-developed games in 2025. French similarly is included on a number of releases in 2025, such as Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 which only includes full English and French Voiceover.
It’s not surprising that many games developed in non-English speaking countries include native Voiceover, but the reasons behind it still apply to every other language in the world. They know that it will help the game’s regional, in this case local, performance, but the same applies to other languages too. Players around the world appreciate the immersion brought by true, localized VO. It changes the immersive experience from partial to full, closing the loop on the true goal of games – immersing players.
This effect for French and Japanese Voiceover is further exemplified when looking at all 43 titles with localized voiceover:
Unsurprisingly, Japanese and Simplified Chinese take the top two spots. Japanese has been included on a number of strong Japanese releases but is also still occasionally used as the only Asian language with full VO on Western releases.
Simplified Chinese similarly can tend to be the only Asian language with full VO on Western releases, though many Western titles do include Japanese and Simplified Chinese VO at this stage. Simplified Chinese is an incredibly important language to include, so it makes sense that it featured prominently in the titles analyzed.
Following these are French, German, European Spanish, and Italian. This is also not surprising as FIGS is still regarded as a core language group (though we’d recommend checking out our white paper from earlier this year: The Age of FIGS is over). As with text localization, Italian is often dropped even if other FIGS languages still get localized voiceover.
Following these we can see some games companies appreciating the importance of South American languages, with both Brazilian Portuguese and LATAM Spanish being included on a selection of titles. While it may seem surprising that they’re only included on 5-6 each, this is somewhat predictable when comparing to Steam’s user base figures.
Speaking of which, let’s compare this to Steam’s user base to see if things line up:
Comparison: 2024 Steam Player-base Share % vs Localized VO on 2025's Analyzed Top 100
As you can see, things aren’t lining up.
The above graph charts the number of times each language has been included as Localized VO on the surveyed Top 100 Games on Steam from 2025, compared with 2024’s average Steam user-share, minus English.
Simplified Chinese, as the most popular language behind English, has the most straightforward comparison. At over 30% of Steam’s user share, it’s understandable that Simplified Chinese VO is included in many new titles. With the world’s largest games market, and fans that prefer localized VO, Simplified Chinese is an essential inclusion for any major release. Being included on 20 releases makes sense, if still a little lower than expected.
However, following Simplified Chinese in player-share is Russian, which has a different story when it comes to localized VO. Of the 43 localized VO games, only 5 included localized Russian VO.
Over 9% of all Steam players use Russian as their primary language, but only 3.75% of Russians speak fluent English, according to the 2021 census. This means that millions of Russian gamers don’t get the full experience of many titles, lacking the immersion and emotionality that voiceover provides.
Russian is also generally regarded as one of the more cost-efficient languages to record for, partially due to the number of Russian voice actors available in major hubs like London, Los Angeles, etc. As will be further highlighted with other languages, Russian is a great example of the inconsistencies between support and popularity that we see in the games industry.
Now let’s talk about FIGS. If you’ve read our white paper “The Age of FIGS is over” you won’t be surprised to hear that Italian has, for many publishers, dropped out of being a “core” language. While German, French, and European Spanish all feature in the top 10 of Steam’s playerbase, Italian has dropped all the way down to 14th with only 0.63% of Steam players on average. Notably less than 1% of Steam players but still the 6th most common language for localized VO in the analyzed titles. This seems like somewhat archaic thinking, as many titles featuring Italian VO also featured all other FIGS languages, without necessarily including major languages like Japanese or Simplified Chinese.
For even greater context, Italian, as the 14th most popular Steam language, has more localized VO support than the 3rd, 5th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, and 13th most popular languages. This is caveated that these are Steam-only figures and don’t account for Italian player-share on consoles, where VO will also feature. Still, this inconsistency is apparent to anyone comparing these data sets.
The rest of the FIGS languages make a bit more sense.
French, German, and European Spanish all have strong representation in Steam’s playerbase and their localized VO support reflects that. French is a slight outlier, having the lowest player-share of these three languages but the most localized VO support. It’s notably the only FIGS language that featured on games with only one localized VO language. This is partially due to the aforementioned strong releases from French studios in 2025, as well as French also being used by gamers in parts of Belgium, Switzerland, Canada (even though it’s European French VO), and Africa. Interestingly, if we combine figures for European Spanish and LATAM Spanish, we end up with support in 16 titles – the exact same as French. This may also then explain why French has so much support e.g Publishers use European French for all French regions, while Spanish is often split between European and Latin American. Expanding this, from the data we can say that, currently, it’s generally only the biggest AAA releases that get both European Spanish and LATAM Spanish Voiceover, with smaller releases tending to focus on European Spanish.
Let’s dive further into LATAM Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. Both languages are receiving more attention every year with game demographics growing across South America. Brazilian Portuguese is the 5th most popular language on Steam, with LATAM Spanish down at 19th, somewhat reflected by their inclusions in 5-6 titles each within the Top 100. It’s likely we’ll see this increase as more South American gamers move to Console and PC gaming as hardware becomes more accessible, though Brazil’s hardware costs are still extremely high due to local import taxes.
Completing our analysis of APAC languages, Traditional Chinese was featured on 6 titles, with Korean on 4. This is an intriguing comparison as many might expect that Korean would be more likely to be featured, especially considering that it’s a slightly more popular language with Steam users. Korean was more likely to be featured on Western games, with Traditional Chinese often getting localized VO on Japanese titles and those with more APAC languages generally.
Looking at the final three supported languages, we can see some surprising results. Polish is a notoriously ‘partially supported’ language; it’s always been a major market for games but often has localization dropped in favor of FIGS and other popular languages. What’s more interesting is to compare it with Turkish, which had no localized support across any of the titles analyzed. The major difference here is that Turkish is a much more “recent” games localization language, with growth in its gaming population occurring over the last 10-15 years, while Polish games culture was already fairly established.
Ukrainian was also featured on 3 titles, the same as Polish, but these were on titles from Ukrainian developers.
Dutch interestingly featured last on the list, with only supported title, which perfectly mirrors its 20th position on the Top 20 Steam Languages. It’s still surprising to see any game include Dutch VO, but the game in question was F1® 25. This may provide us more insight into why Dutch was included, as F1 racing has become very popular in the country.
What are the Key Takeaways?
Progress within Localization vs Localized VO
We’ve written many articles about the changing world of localization and how the standards weren’t enough. It used to be that FIGS were the only localized languages, sometimes paired with Japanese. Since 2006, the range of localized languages has increased with the growth of the games industry globally. (If you want to see how things changed, check out our article: Localization Support Changes From '06 to '22). The same, apparently, can’t quite be said for localized VO.
While there has absolutely been progress, with languages like Simplified Chinese being included in a variety of titles, it’s clear there’s still some “traditional” thinking going on. The reliance on FIGS as a core language group is absolutely observable in the titles we analyzed, with all four being the third to sixth most popular localized VO languages. Compare that to Steam user figures, where these languages are often outpaced by Russian, Brazilian Portuguese, and others, and you’ll see that companies are still prioritizing these ‘standard’ languages. Italian’s prominence in localized VO support further exemplifies this reversion to the ‘traditional’.
Even with Simplified Chinese appearing on 20 of the analyzed titles, it’s still notably behind Japanese and only just in-front of French, despite consistently being the second (and sometimes even first) most popular language on Steam. If that popularity was accurately reflected in Localized VO, we’d expect more of the 43 titles to include it, and even for the other 57 titles without any localized VO.
To put it bluntly: The biggest games market in the world only had localized VO support on 20 of the Top 100 applicable 2025 Steam Releases. And that’s not even including the titles with no localization.
Localized VO doesn’t match Steam’s Playerbase
Another clear conclusion we can draw from the data is that the spread of languages supported in Localized VO does not reflect Steam’s Playerbase. There’s a clear tendency to localize VO for FIGS when other, more popular, languages get far less support. Russian was supported in half the number of titles as Italian, despite having nearly 15 times the number of players on Steam. The same can be said for Brazilian Portuguese, which has nearly 6 times the number of Steam players as Italian.
Going back to our graph from earlier in the article, the difference between Steam users and Localized VO is stark. To reiterate, while Japanese Localized VO representation is far more pronounced than their Steam playerbase, it is worth keeping in mind that Japan heavily prefers console to PC, meaning they’ll have larger representation on those platform’s playerbases. But even still, the fact that Japanese has more VO representation than Simplified Chinese, Russian, FIGS, Brazilian Portuguese, and all other languages, shows a lack of VO support for others.
Localized VO is still not a standard
Of the 100 titles analyzed for this study, only 43 had any form of localized VO. Keeping our methodology in mind, this represents a much larger number of games as these all contained text localization and full native audio, which many other major titles didn’t.
In general, you can expect 2025 releases to include text localization, typically including an array of languages ranging from 1 – 10, with some including even more than that.
In comparison, of the 100 titles studied, the average number of localized VO languages was only 1.3 per game.
This disparity is almost definitely down to budgetary reasons. While there will be other factors influencing these decisions, the higher cost of localizing VO clearly makes a difference compared with the more affordable text localization (which is generally required anyway, even if you’re localizing VO). While text localization is incredibly important for accessibility, localized VO is important for true immersion. Localized VO is the cherry on top when it comes to immersing your players in your game’s world. Hearing characters and their emotionality in a players’ native language is what truly connects your players and characters. Without it, players are naturally left with a somewhat ‘removed’ experience, where they can never truly forget they are playing a localized version of another languages’ game.