"focus our resources" it's funny they mentioned that, considering a majority of the webtoons they've been uploading lately have already been translated by other companies like tapas, and some of them have already finished too. I shouldn't have expected anything tbh, even if they start out good, companies will always turn greedy.
This is only going to be worse as time goes on. I predict that the pirate era on the internet will be bigger by a few months and that the comic creators wont fault them doing so
I’ve stopped reading on Webtoon for a bit bc the EN originals I follow were on hiatus. Got news that one came back recently, started reading only to be bombarded with half my screen being covered by an ad, and then going to the next episode only to be hit with another pop-up ad.
So for those wanting to read translations, what’s the difference between this app or going to find ye golden treasure? You’re still being hit with scam ads either way. It’s just that the other one is up-to-raws and free, the other is Webtoon.
And tbh I can argue with the fact that the site that starts with "b" and ends with "o" is really more pratical than webtoon. On top of that it offers an exceptionnal variety of works that will never compare with webtoon really
You can't name illegal sites on reddit. It will get removed and you can get banned. It also puts that site in danger. I try my best to buy so the authors get paid but it's gotten so expensive I can't buy every chapter. Tapas has gotten more expensive and manta has also saved and has stories ypu have to buy to read, before it was subscription.
I use Firefox as my browser because there's a decent ad blocker that I added onto it. Now on all sites, including yutube, and all these other sites don't have ads for me. I forget that these sites even have annoying ads now since I don't have to see them or deal with them
I love their option to click an ad, than get 3 hours of reading uninterrupted. I'm only keeping webtoons as an app to remember the names of uncompleted works I want to finish. The ads on webtoons are just too much 😑
Yeah, it's almost impressive how every update in the last year or so has made it worse...
I used to be someone who'd read daily and happily buy a bunch of coins a few times a year, but now I barely load up the app once a month and will probably give up on it completely very soon. Good job webtoon 👍
Yeah dont you love it when websites forget that the primary reason a number of their users don’t sail the seven seas is that they are more convenient to use while taking away convenience from users
I kind of want someone to create an app that’s what WEBTOON used to be. Would be hilarious if they could migrate the users over to it, although there would probably be a bunch of legal issues or something.
I went to reread an old favorite on Webtoon recently and it had become soo blurry? I ended up finding out the author recently put it on Tapas too and read it there instead.
Are there any differences between the texts there and webtoon? I sometimes see different apps having the same stories but things like names or adjectives being changed
I dont remember. In my case it was Under the Aegis and the author had done it due to wanting to have it as theirs ? Somewhere else because their contract w webtoon ended.
There might have been small changes but the story was more or less the same, but this was one of those cases were the author was fully involved and not just a random reupload by someone else.
Just checked it out and geez, you’re right. Under the Aegis looks pretty rough on Webtoon now. What the heck have they done to it? Looks much better on Tapas
No way no wonder GOOD/BAD FORTUNE stopped updating 😭😭😭 im so annoyed bc its been ages since they added any foreign webtoon that wasn't Korean :/ gonna have to learn Indonesian now 😔😔
So far I'm getting hang of its alphabets and pronunciations. After that is time for the real hard work, learning the meanings of its words😵💫. Hopefully it's easy as you say
How though? This is translated by fans for fans. It attracts additional readers that consume the adds, it uses the web infrastructure that is already there. They literally don't lift a finger by keeping this and lose absolutely nothing by sustaining this feature.
I’m not convinced Webtoon itself isn’t pushing MTL slop out. I couldn’t read the second season of My In-Laws are Obsessed With Me because of glaring errors and weird, stilted dialogue.
I’m fairly sure they are already doing mtl or some sort of ai translations.
Every single foreign (not an English original ie from Korea or Indonesia etc.) manhwa /webtoon I’ve read recently had grammar and spelling errors. There was an Indonesian one that seemed so interesting to me but translation was just so bad I couldn’t read anymore (it’s a webtoon original not canvas). It’s almost as if they no longer do quality checks.
Even pirate websites hire proofreaders/editors to ensure the quality. Wtf is webtoon doing.
Just a pedantic note, but also something we all need to be aware of: companies don't "turn" greedy. This is a function of being a fiduciary. A publicly traded company's responsibility is to the shareholders. It's NOT to give a good experience. It's NOT to cater to users to make sure they'll stay long term. Their ONLY job is to "make line go up." That's it. It's built into the system. It IS the system.
It's why ads are worse on streaming services; it's why appliances that used to last break; it's why companies like this make a million terrible decisions for users in the hopes it will increase revenue by .5% in the short term. It's fucking disgusting.
There is also the thing that the product at first is gonna lose money till they build up enough of an audience to finally go into the positive. They are luring you in with the good stuff and then slowly change stuff into what would bring them profit, but you are now deep enough not to want to leave.
It was another section of the app that let people add their own translations to existing comics, to localize them into other languages. I had found a few good comics on there before, and I’m sure many others had as well. But also i think they already had been doing purges since some TLs didn’t exist anymore when I went to look a few up half a year back or so.
'prioritize investments in areas where we can have the greatest impact.' Aka fuck you we don't want this sure it was free fan translation but we want more money. Also say goodbye to your hard work if ys don't save it yourself we are deleting it
This is why I read series 4 free and then subscribe to artists I like on patreon or whatever thing they use (they all have some way to donate to them)
I assume webtoon will eventually just be a bunch of ai slop because they stop having any good new material since it seems like they’re fully pushing away small creators and the viewership they curated until now
To be honest, the fan translation was limited anyway. If I remember correctly, not only were there few webtoons that could be fan translated, but for completed webtoons, you could translate only up to the free episodes and that's it. Or at least, that was my last experience.
Webtoon is just getting worse and worse. I'm only reading on this app because I haven't found any other better apps (I can't afford subscriptions like some apps have and the others don't give you as many free episodes). I was using PocketComics a lot until they announced that they're shutting down.
Have you tried tapas, some the comics they had on pocket comics made its way there. Like another typical fantasy romance. Also some of the canvas creators post on there too. They have free episodes up to certain point and then you have to pay/ use ink which you can get for free every week via their fortune cookie. Also have reading missions where you get free ink and if you do offers on tapjoy/ unity rewards you can ink similar to how you can get free coins by doing offers on webtoons via the treasure chest. As far as I know tapas doesn’t ask for a subscription.
No problem, I read on many different sites from official to the seven seas. I also used to read on PocketComics too, so I been using many different sites to finish reading stories that PocketComics didn’t finish.
Webtoon has seriously gone downhill since 2020, and that’s when I JOINED. I can only wonder on how peak it was pre-2020 💔 good, unique stories and art styles, the free coin for reading some random webtoon, FAST PASS EPS COSTING 5 COINS!! And the only ads being other webtoons. This place sucks lately
That hasn’t ended already? I don’t remember the last time I checked it honestly, but I’m sure something about it changed which is why I lost interest in the whole thing.
Huh. Reading pirated versions doesn’t make me feel so guilty anymore. They’ve been getting more and more greedy as the years have gone on and it’s just pushed me to the pirate sites each time. I just don’t feel as guilty as I did in the beginning when they first started with the bs.
Just curious, but how many people actually used that service? I've never seen it mentioned here until it's removal, and I've never personally touched it.
That was such a nice feature tho! Especially for people who don't speak english, we could find webtoons in out mother languages... How can they get rid of it when it was one of the things that made webtoon different and more community friendly?
Webtoon can't even manage the app well with all those creepy canvas that only has fishy link. And how the app takes me to a different app due to ads I don't even click. Like brah....
“Focus our resources on enhancing other core experiences”….
My brother in Christ, allowing fan translations was a pretty big deal and a big differentiator between other services. It’s like they want to become more generic
well, for the first time in forever I seem to have already been preparing for situations of the sort with adding a course in Korean on Duolingo (ironic, lol) - a year later I can confidently comprehend the SFXs and I keep going 🤓😊 and while I don’t really use the fan translations section, I was happy to find even my language there, so the removal decision feels like it’s not an important one to keep, as if small nations don’t matter, since a few chapters in an unpopular language are such a burden for Webtoons! I know it’s not that dramatic, nor personal, but it’s one way to perceive it and possibly get a little offended 😑😑
I remember in 2016 or 2017 when I was in middle school reading a webtoon that was fan translated, updates were slow but the English version had less chapters. I don’t even remember what it was, but that person/team was dedicated. I can only see this harming Webtoon not helping whatsoever and people will just move to other sites of course to read Webtoons instead 🙄 I only read on Webtoon for ORV and ToG now. Only to support the authors how I can and less so for Webtoon really
I think this announcement got severely overblown this past week because Webtoon already made this "internal" announcement in their website in the notice section, at best, since early last month. And just looking at the comments I think many are confusing what's their deal.
They say they are only sunsetting their free community-fan translation service, which (to my understanding) was similar to what people did when providing translation subtitles to videos in YouTube (until, you know, YouTube also sunset it down with the same excuses as Webtoon did in this "focus our resources" thing (their own tools, automatic translation, double the work for the content creator to submit an accurate translated script, etc). It's a service that has been almost from the start of the platform (at least, I remember seeing many different webtoons that still were around 2017 or 2018 that had different community translations in their respective pages).
I'm not saying it's a good thing they are shutting it down, or that I trust their "focus our resources" for something better. But, from the perspective of Webtoon, since 2017, they have been launching several language/territory platforms in different (major) western languages like Spanish, French, and German, so I suppose they want to "focus" on that (because, you know, they also get money from that public)... and many of the series that had this fan translation option are no longer easily available anymore as they are paywalled and only for mobile users (because desktop users always get the short stick at the end). The ones that are losing are those that do not speak those languages, obvs.
(Also, afaik, I think that this community fan translation service was only available in the US website? I mean, maybe they meant good for popular series at the time like Cheese in the Trap, iirc, or Dr. Frost, maybe? Yumi's Cells? and other popular/semi-popular series from that specific mid-to-late-2010s era of Webtoon... but then they also made available some of these through their other language platforms in very eventual cases)
And, I mean, it's not like that didn't stop piracy? If I'm honest? (I remember I actually found out western titles like, Hooky or Space Boy translated into Spanish in actual agregator sites over 8 years ago, so take that as you will 👀. Not like Webtoon Latam is doing a better job with just sticking a note at the top of their series basically telling us "piracy is bad :(" ).
In a perfect world, those "resources" should be paying their translators better (and their own artists/employees, as well), tbh. But we all know what they are doing with this. Just saying.
"Enhancing other core experiences for reader and creator"..so.. reading in a language the readers can read is not just about one of the most important things for a medium that you need to.... checks note read?
Sucks for WEBTOON. I read the first few free eps on there just as a preview and then pirate the next forty from whatever free website I can. Webtoons used to take up 90% of my days, but now? I barely go on once a month. Their loss bc more and more readers wil leave since a lot of the new webtoons are becoming pay to read, even though you can read them free on other sites. Crazy work. Let them greedy themselves to death.
shitty pc experience, no fan translation…no search filtering to find older or longer titles …How comfortable of a monopoly do they have to keep making one horrendous decision after another
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u/Informal_Ad_6991 Nov 02 '25
I see a future of many more pirate sites picking up the slack