Someone, please tell this author (in Korean) that if he wants the dirty foreigners to pay up then work with some translators and get your series translated into English at least (like come on it's the global language it'll give you the biggest reach). Also, I have seen this problem many times where many authors don't even realize that most of their audience isn't even from their own country like EVER HEARD OF EXPORTS? Most businesses make most of their money from exports it's ESSENTIAL. If only they knew how to and which market to tap into they would be raking in millions and the platforms billions.
One thing these authors could do is run a poll (in English so everybody can understand) that asks which country is the reader from this will give the authors a good idea and to facilitate this the scanlators should include a link to these polls in the description or somewhere else like in the chapters. If the platform (Webtoons, tappytoon, tapas, Lezhin) doesn't have a built-in polls feature then make a google form or a poll on Reddit. It is THAT easy. Now, this might not be enough to completely change everything but come on do you really expect such things?
Also, even if we get to a utopia where every series gets serialized and translated if the platforms don't get their pricing right for different regions it's just not gonna work.
Let's take TappyToon for example, it takes 3 tokens for new chapters, 9.99$ gets you 82 tokens, that is worth 27 chapters fair enough. Now, imagine being in an area where 10$ is a little too much. Where 100$ is the monthly wage. So, you have a choice, either live or support the author or continue reading scanlations till you get to a good point in life where you can afford the legal stuff. And don't even get me started with all the region-locked crap that's out there. With that, you can't even blame people coz I myself have tried accessing Crunchyroll through VPN and they banned my IP address.
Here is a Wikipedia
article just for reference, this doesn't mean everything but it gives a good indicator.
A few quotes by Gaben :
"The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates."
"Piracy is almost always a service problem."
They summarize almost everything there is to piracy. Game piracy was a big issue but now using Steam is soo much easier and legal that almost no one does it anymore. And another takeaway from Steam would be regional pricing, this ensures (to an extent) that the prices in a particular region for games are affordable and not over the top like 10 days worth of wages. IIRC, the prices were extremely low (up to 80% discounts as well) in Argentina during the 2020 Halloween Sale. Also, for reference prices on Steam are almost always lower in China compared to many other regions.
Also, the websites of the official platforms SUCK compared to many websites. I've had issues on Webtoons where there is no indication (like MangaDex) if a page is loading so I just keep reading thinking: Oh there is no loading icon so it must have loaded when I only find out after reading that something is wrong and then have to re-read to realize that oh this page hadn't loaded.
Also, what's the problem with not having Ko-Fi and Patreon? It's not our problem you don't even give us an internationally accessible payment method to support you.
I can continue on with the problems they have but I'm getting tired.
Edit:
@toomanywords Yes, they do come to Scanlation websites to see the responses, popularity and other stuff for a series. This is basically a testing ground for them. After serializing a series they come again to see responses for the latest chapters and if they aren't so good then they can decide to cut their losses short by axing the series. Coz it's not like these corporates have any tastes when it comes anime and manga so of course they have to rely on fans to know what to do.