A team?
They have the game script. UE4 has subtitle support. It's a case of syncing subtitles then to the game cutscenes.
Considering people add subtitles to movies etc in their spare time, this shouldn't even be a factor.
Apparently Toys For Bob don't bother with subtitle support for Skylanders either, so they're just being negligent to people with hearing loss.
As someone that has worked in subtitling and localization for Netflix, it's a lot more work than you think. Now with a source script available for a single language(English), the actual needs are less demanding as the actual localization effort is dramatically cut.
But consider that the script and subtitling for the hearing impaired are actually
not the same. The script doesn't usually take into account an off-screen audio cue or sound that is unspoken but the actors may react to. How can the deaf hear a gunshot unless told? Music as well. Do the Spyro games ever have an audio focused mini game or a special musical tone that is necessary for progress but not part of a cutscene or scripted?
Often the inclusion of such additional descriptive insertions are paramount for the hearing impaired and require a lot of additional work. Consider Spyro is three full games that weigh in at what 10-15 hours each? They all will need a context check, editor, and multiple retiming passes to ensure proper quality...assuming they care to put in true effort to do the job correctly.
But what about different markets? French(Parisian and/or Canadian), Spanish(Latin American and/or Castilian), Japanese, Chinese(traditional and others?), etc... Not all deaf understand English, nor is this game only available in one market. The production balloons dramatically editing, checking, timing, retiming, fixing, etc... for all. This will require contracting multiple staff and teams to get this right(and believe me people complain like crazy when a subpar effort or slight mistake, typo, or mistranslation is found).
Granted, I
fully endorse Activision do the work for as many markets as possible in which this game is available.(I don't expect the game to get near the options that a film production on a streaming service does, so at minimum English alone for NA unlike the EU, which well...), but my intent is just to highlight the tremendous effort that is involved to do subtitling proper. (But also Studios have tremendous guidelines in place for their content to abide by surrounding subtitling, dubbing, and localization whereas games...?)
