Star Merge: Our First Step to Multi-Lingual Localization
Star Merge has been more than just a mobile game we work on. It has become one of the key milestones in 23 Studios’ journey toward offering fully multilingual localization services. As Turkey’s first game localization company, we have been bringing games into Turkish since 2009. By 2021, we knew it was time to expand further. We made the decision to offer not only Turkish but also Arabic and then full multilingual localization for global developers. That decision opened the door to the services we provide today in more than twenty languages.
Our first step was reaching out to mobile game studios interested in expanding into new markets. Toward the end of 2022, we connected with Plummy Games Co-Founder Adnan Fatin Kobazoglu. It turned out we reached them at exactly the right moment, as they were planning to start their localization process as well. After an initial video meeting, we began our work with Romanian and Estonian. Not long after, two languages became six, and eventually twenty.
Today, we localize Star Merge into Czech, Estonian, Filipino, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, European Spanish, Russian, Romanian, Turkish, Thai and Vietnamese. We have maintained this collaboration continuously for three years, keeping pace with every update, new feature and new content that the game receives.
Throughout this journey, we have been fortunate to receive consistent support from Nadejda Mutaf at Plummy Games. She regularly sends materials both through their internal system and additional Excel files, making the entire process smooth and helping us deliver the highest possible localization quality. We share the same vision that localization is not only about translating words but re-creating the game experience for every culture.
When we first started working on Star Merge, the game had around fifty thousand downloads on Google Play. Today, thanks to Plummy Games’ marketing efforts and the impact of reaching players in their own languages, Star Merge has surpassed one million downloads. Being a part of this success story is something we take great pride in.
Star Merge has given us both a strong beginning and a long-term partnership in our multilingual expansion. After three years, we continue working on it with the same enthusiasm, and it remains one of the most valuable milestones in 23 Studios’ global journey.
