… many of your software products are $place_bootlicker_phrase_here. They really are! But please also be aware of other countries keyboard layout.
For example Freefight Worldcup is very unkindly to querty layouts. You have to play with z,x,c,v to attack, jump, shoot, pass and arrow-keys to move the charakters. Well, thats a very comfortable way when you've got an typical en/us keyboard. Users with qwertz, qzerty or azerty f.e. will get a knot to their fingers quickly. There are many other programs (especially indie games) which are using the “x and z” or “x and y” combination.
Another good example is the famous “Edit -> Undo” shortcut. It's almost realised by “controle-key + z”. By now it's a kind of standard to use this shortcut to undo something, but to me it's a bit like a design mistake. Because another time querty layouts are got the benefit. Okay, I see that there are limited possibilities by choosing shortcut keys. But when you use a quertz style keyboard, you have to use both hands for this shortcut. Only people with long fingers can use this shortcut one handed. So at least for many people it might be nearly the same effort as using the mouse instead of the undo shortcut. Especially when you remember, that not every user is a i-can-type-quick-as-hell keyboard god.
So this is my tip for you (escpecially for game developers): Instead of using layout critical keys, try to figure out which keys rows are identical and/or comfortable in most layouts. The classic Nethack “h-j-k-l” style seems pretty nice to me. Or even offer an options menu, where the user can modify the controle settings of the program. In fact of that f.e. the dvorak layout is totally dirrefent to qwertz or qwerrty, this would be imho the best way.
