Wizards Cuts Portuguese and Simplified Chinese From Paper Magic
On February 23rd, Wizards of the Coast announced that starting with Bloomburrow, they will no longer print paper Magic cards in Simplified Chinese. Furthermore, beginning with Modern Horizons 3, paper Magic will no longer be printed in Portuguese. This announcement falls in line with previous announcements halting the production of Korean, Russian, and Traditional Chinese Magic cards, albeit for different reasons.
According to the announcement on DailyMTG:
Unfortunately, this means we are making the difficult decision to halt Portuguese product after Modern Horizons 3 and Chinese (Simplified) product with Bloomburrow. Portuguese and Chinese (Simplified) product sales have not kept pace with rising costs across the board.
This decision is allegedly purely a financial one. This is in contrast to the end of production for cards printed in Russian Cyrillic, Korean, and Traditional Chinese.
Wizards notes the passion of their Portuguese and Chinese-speaking player bases in their February 23rd announcement:
Even in countries where Portuguese is the primary language, we see significant numbers of players choosing to purchase English cards. We know this change hits especially hard, given the passionate fanbases of Chinese (Simplified) and Portuguese speakers who have always made the game feel global and welcoming. This change isn't a reflection on their passion--in fact, we will continue to support local and regional play opportunities throughout these regions, and English-language tabletop product will continue to be available in those regions. Additionally, Magic: The Gathering Arena will continue to support digital play in Portuguese.
The Gradual End Of Paper Magic In Portuguese And Simplified Chinese
Although Outlaws of Thunder Junction will be printed in the aforementioned languages yet to be discontinued, Promo Packs from the Wild-West set will only be printed in English, Japanese, German, French, and Simplified Chinese. This is to transition the product out in preparation for Modern Horizons 3, releasing in June of 2024. Similarly, Bloomburrow Promo Packs will only be printed in English and Japanese when that set launches in Q3 2024. Finally, Magic: The Gathering Arena will discontinue support for Russian players starting "after Modern Horizons 3". How long after is unclear, from the article, but that would conclude any support from Magic towards Russian players nonetheless.
According to the article, paper Magic releases will still support six languages: English, Japanese, German, Spanish, Italian, and French. Magic: The Gathering Arena will continue to support these languages as well as Korean and Portuguese.
A Cabaretti Causality
The 2022 announcement to end support for paper Magic in Korean, Traditional Chinese, and Russian coincided with Streets of New Capenna's release of a different borderless copy of Gala Greeters for each language supported, causing the Gala Greeters in the now-unsupported languages to spike drastically in price. At this time, you cannot even find a borderless Russian copy of Gala Greeters on TCGPlayer. A fairly small handful of collectors have secured copies on Facebook's MTGRarities website. However, according to a post made there in June 2023, Wizards of the Coast never officially released the card. As such, only two copies purportedly exist in the wild. With the news that Portuguese and Simplified Chinese will soon be unsupported languages, we may see similar financial effects soon.
Do you agree with Wizards of the Coast's decision to cut these languages from paper Magic card production?