Weren't WD notorious for hacking the code of their projects from the inside out as needed?
Needed since Japanese devs actually throw away their code after a game is done(a practice which I find unthinkable, thankfully they don't anymore), so they need to find other means to fix things.
The other case is Japanese coders tend to write their code knowing its going to be thrown away leading to some true coding abominations. Making hacking and workarounds the only way to solve some problems.
And yeah WD had one programmer on staff, but was also a partner, and WD was different in general.
From reading in between the lines with this sad cancellation, and Dragon Crown's issues, I think Vanillaware might be struggling. I hate to be doom and gloom but I wouldn't be surprised if they get bought out or go under after DC.
EDIT: Oh and yeah localization houses rarely higher programmers, I know WD had one and that's it. At my old workplace localization and development had a wall between them and I can think of one case where an outsourced dev team ended their relation with the company after a japan launch but before the localization, even though the company owned the code, localization was canned. I'm hoping this may change from one of my attempted business endeavors(everyone please keep your fingers crossed that the parties I'm talking to say yes, then I can talk more about it).
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