Ah, I must have been hallucinating that groups regularly dropped series when they got licensed back in the mid 2000s.
Oh, wait, no I didn't!
This is true, mainly because early scanslators felt they accomplished their goal. That being: generate enough interest in a title that a publisher will purchase a licensing agreement to translate and distribute the work in their area.
Of course, back then, online publishing wasn't as big of a thing even though that's primarily how scanslators did things.
But now? Online is the preferred method, and not just because it's cheaper. It's also so they can restrict who can read their licensed titles by using a person's IP address so that only people in their publishing region can read the titles. No matter if they wish to be a paying customer or not. Meaning that if someone wants to read their releases, they have to use a VPN to do so.
What's more is that Crunchyroll has already indicated which way the business is going to go from here on out. They've already started using AI to generate the subs on their anime titles, and are working their way towards voice generation as well, completely cutting out translators and voice actors. Eventually, they hope to have things to the point where they just chuck the anime at an AI, no need for even a time-stamped script, and have it spit out a completely translated title, both subbed and dubbed.
But you can bet your ass they won't lower their subscription fees. They might even raise them, claiming some lunacy like, "CPU time for AI work is so expensive!"
What's more is how the business model of licensing typically works. You see, most licensing contracts make no accounting of how many copies of the translated title are sold. They don't really care because they're not the ones printing, distributing, and promoting those translated editions. The original publishers in Japan have absolutely no skin in that game, and they like it that way.
This ultimately means that not only are the number of copies sold are not counted by the publisher in Japan (this number being a big determining factor in whether a series gets axed or not), the mangaka also doesn't really see much of your money. The original publishers pretty much pockets all the licensing fees and walk away whistling. Maybe if they're being generous, the mangaka will get a
little bit of those licensing fees.
This is why I'm such a big proponent of continued scanslation. The business model as it is now only serves to maximize profits for the publishers at both ends, the mangaka benefits very little, and people are excluded just because they live in the UK or the EU, and not in North America.
Furthermore, there's the risks involved in scanslation... which are virtually nil. Most licensing publishers won't go after individual scanslators because it's too much of an expense for too little reward. Like I said before, it's the legal equivalent of using a sledgehammer to swat a fly. The most an individual scanslator will get is a Cease And Desist. Which means that if they drop the title right then and there, then all is good. It is incredibly rare (as in, you're more likely to get struck by lightning while
also being attacked by a shark) for a publisher to go after an individual with a lawsuit right off the bat, and that sort of thing is usually reserved for aggregator sites. And even then, they'll usually start off with a C&D, because lawyers and court fees are expensive.
Of course, that's just my two cents on the matter.
