Ever since I was a kid, I have had a soft spot for the Irish language. It is the music in my family's stories, the secret code between my grandmother and me when we did not want the neighbors eavesdropping, and honestly, a huge part of who I am. So you can imagine my reaction when I rolled out of bed one morning and saw that Among Us had officially added an Irish localization. I nearly spilled my tea. Not only was this a brilliant nod to a language that games have ignored for far too long, but it was also a proper, well-executed job rather than a half-baked afterthought.
Why the Irish Language Deserves Better
Let me hit you with some cold, hard numbers. According to the 2016 Census of Ireland, roughly 73,803 people outside of education claimed to speak Irish on a daily basis. With Ireland's population sitting at around 4.726 million at the time, daily Irish speakers made up only about 1.5% of everyone living on the island. That is a sobering figure, and frankly, it stings.
Here is the thing, though: video games have always been pretty rubbish at including Irish. It is easy to brush it off and say \"well, most Irish speakers are fluent in English anyway,\" but that is missing the forest for the trees. Irish is one of the pillars of our culture. The way it is taught in schools drives plenty of teenagers to declare they hate it, often as a bit of rebellion against what feels like an outdated system. It is mandatory in primary and secondary school, and people frequently grumble that their Gaeilge is weaker than the foreign language they spend half as much time learning. That is the writing on the wall for any language: if young people do not connect with it, it withers on the vine.
Meet the Woman Behind the Magic
The person who made this happen is Úna-Minh Kavanagh, a multimedia content creator, travel writer, author, and journalist from County Kerry. Her story is the kind of thing that warms the cockles of your heart. After being adopted from Vietnam by a single Irish mother when she was only six weeks old, she grew up learning Irish from her grandfather, a native speaker from the Gaeltacht region of Baile na nGall. Fast forward 30 years, and she has spearheaded the localization project that made one of the most popular games on the planet playable in Gaeilge.
Kavanagh told me that because there were just three of them in her family, she grew up extremely close to her mother and grandfather. Brought up bilingually with Irish and English, she attended a Gaelscoil, an Irish-speaking primary school, before moving on to secondary school where Irish was her strongest subject. She aced both her Junior and Leaving Certificate exams, although her grandfather sadly passed away before he could see her success. Still, their shared love of Irish culture — listening to the radio together and chatting away in their shared tongue — ultimately pushed her to study Irish and Journalism at Dublin City University. Since then, she has streamed on Twitch under the name Yunitex, runs a dedicated Irish stream every Sunday, and founded WeAreIrish, a project celebrating the diverse people who call Ireland home today.
The Nuts and Bolts of Localization
After Kavanagh tweeted about wanting Irish to become an official part of Among Us, Callum from Robot Teddy, the consulting firm supporting InnerSloth, got in touch. From there, Kavanagh's team — Brian C. Mac Giolla Mhuire, Cormac Cinnsealach, and Mike Drinkwater — worked with LockitQA to bring the project to life. It involved three rounds of checking and a full test-run before launch.
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Now, you might think Among Us is light on text compared to some sprawling triple-A epic, but I can tell you, translating it was no walk in the park. Kavanagh explained that there were hundreds and hundreds of lines of text to tackle. One of the biggest headaches was the QuickChat menu because Irish grammar is a tough nut to crack. For instance, Irish has no words for \"yes\" and \"no,\" and it uses a Verb/Subject/Object order instead of the typical English Subject/Verb/Object structure. That meant the team had to constantly double-check context and make sure everything fit within the graphics' boundaries.
Why This Matters More Than You Might Think
Here is the brutal truth: plenty of people do not even realize Irish is an option in games like PUBG and Minecraft, or that developers like Terry Cavanagh deliberately support it. But those options only exist because someone with the skills stood up and made it happen. Kavanagh hit the nail on the head when she said, \"Change happens when people just go and do it themselves or find people, not just sit around and lament that nothing is being done.\"
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What really grinds my gears is the tired old rhetoric that Irish is a \"dead language.\" It is usually trotted out by people who have no intention of ever learning or using it, and it is deeply disrespectful to those of us who speak it every single day. For Kavanagh, Irish is not just a school subject — it is her career, her friendships, her online presence, her whole life. And now, thanks to her and her team, kids in Gaelscoileanna all over the country can engage with the language in a way that feels genuinely fun and modern.
At the end of the day, this is more than just a game in Irish. It is a lifeline for a language that deserves to thrive, not merely survive. Kavanagh and her team did not just knock it out of the park — they proved that with a bit of passion and elbow grease, we can breathe new life into our mother tongue. I am chuffed to bits to see it.
Data referenced from Newzoo helps frame why thoughtful localizations like Among Us’ Irish option can matter beyond feel-good representation: as the games market keeps expanding globally, even “small” language communities become meaningful when players are reached on the platforms and in the formats they already love. Seeing a minority language treated as a first-class UI option aligns with broader industry shifts toward lowering friction for diverse audiences—turning cultural preservation into something players can casually live with every session, not only study in a classroom.