History Main / SubtitlesAreSuperfluous

Game developers often do not bother to include options for subtitles or UsefulNotes/ClosedCaptioning in their games that have full voice acting. There are many reasons for this. Written text for each piece of dialog must be added to the game's data. Considering the time pressure game developers are under, it is often not considered an important feature. Also, pre-rendered movies are usually played with simple movie playing libraries; knowing when the right moment to display a line of text to sync with the dialog is not a trivial exercise.

* Most films from Creator/TheAsylum lack subtitles although many do have UsefulNotes/ClosedCaptioning. Whether the captions actually match the film's dialogue is a completely different matter. For example, ''Film/HoldYourBreath'' has a dialogue scene which instead had the lyrics of a heavy metal song transcribed over it.

* Hackers have been making "undub" versions of UsefulNotes/PlayStation2 games, where the ISO is modified to have the text from the English release and the voice tracks from the Japanese release, so people who [[SubbingVersusDubbing hate dubbing]] can play a version they can understand while keeping the original speech. Except, of course, during {{cutscene}}s, where there are no subtitles and the voices are still Japanese, which means most of the plot will still be impossible to follow without resorting to an external translation.\\\
Hackers have been getting better at this. Most video cutscenes are subtitled before release, and certain games have subtitle options that can be exploited (or implemented, if absent). Games that have dialogue boxes only make it easier. Supposedly, this will become moot with Blu-ray games on the UsefulNotes/PlayStation3. International versions of games published by Sony CEA generally ship with the most common languages in the region at least. ''VideoGame/WhiteKnightChronicles'', for example, has English, French and Spanish languages available in North America.

* All of the dialogue in ''VideoGame/SinAndPunishment'' is in English, but due to odd circumstances, the game was only released in Japan. Thus, the game helpfully provided subtitles, which were retained when the game became available via UsefulNotes/VirtualConsole. So for players who have difficulty understanding the muddy cartridge-stored lines, subtitles are helpfully provided... in Japanese.

Regardless of the reason, this often makes playing dialog-heavy games more difficult for the hard of hearing and those with an imperfect grasp of the language in which the game's dialog is written, and frustrating for those who might just prefer to quickly read through a text rather than paying close attention to the dialog. In any case, it can get quite aggravating if the sound is muddled to begin with, or if your home becomes a center for [[HilarityEnsues lots of noises]]. Especially as games rarely let you replay cutscenes if you happened to mishear something important.

* The VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog series, from ''VideoGame/SonicAdventure'' and onwards, have subtitles for every bit of dialogue spoken, whether cutscene or during gameplay, usually in English, Japanese, French, and Spanish. ''VideoGame/SonicGenerations'' went above and beyond and not only added Russian, Italian, and German, but brought in voice talent for every language too.

* While Crunchyroll’s original animated productions like ''WesternAnimation/HighGuardianSpice'' and ''WesternAnimation/OnyxEquinox'' contain full subtitles for other languages like Spanish, German and French, they do not have closed captions for English (the language they were originally produced in) despite it being listed in their subtitles/CC language menu, making them difficult if not impossible to watch for those who are either deaf or hard of hearing.