Wizards of the Coast (WotC), maker of Magic: The Gathering, has announced that it will stop printing physical or “tabletop” cards in two of its current eight languages, Portuguese and Chinese (Simplified). The last Portuguese release will be Modern Horizons 3, a straight-to-Modern set scheduled for the second quarter of 2024. The last Chinese (Simplified) release will be Bloomburrow, a Standard-legal set scheduled for the third quarter of 2024.
The announcement cites “rising costs and shifts in global demand”, stating that “Portuguese and Chinese (Simplified) product sales have not kept pace with rising costs across the board.” For Portuguese specifically, WotC further claims that “…in countries where Portuguese is the primary language, we see significant numbers of players choosing to purchase English cards.”
Despite discontinuing the two languages in tabletop, WotC insists that it is not abandoning markets such as Brazil and China: “[W]e 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.” Further, the digital platform Magic: The Gathering Arena (MTGA) will still support the Portuguese language. (MTGA is not available in any version of Chinese.)
This is the second instance of WotC discontinuing Magic languages in less than two years, following the July 2022 announcement ending tabletop Magic printings in Korean, Russian, and Chinese (Traditional). As recently as the first half of 2022, Magic’s primary releases appeared in eleven languages and scripts. At the end of 2024, that number will be down to six: English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish.
