Quebec wants less games!

Well Quebec actually wants more games in French, which I’m all in support of, but the method they’re using to make such things happen is something which I’m not too wild about.

Le soleil reports that the French language police has decided that all video games sold in Quebec must now have a French translation.

This is a huge slap in the face to all Quebec gamers who will have their video game selection cut down considerably. As little as 36% of games released in Quebec are currently bilingual or French. While it’s already the case that new games in Canada come with bilingual packaging and instruction manuals to have the actual game include a full French translation is a much more involved change requiring a considerable amount of work on the development side to implement.

The Quebec demographic is a tiny one which continues to alienate itself by making ridiculous standards which companies find too strict to be worth their time to follow and will often opt simply not to do business there rather than to waste time and energy adhering to them.

Gamers in Europe are already quite affected by similar such laws and get their fraction of games later than the rest of the world does. The article goes on to mention that in Europe 80% of games released are bilingual but this statistic is deceiving as simply elliminating English only titles will raise the percentage of French games without actually increasing their numbers.

It’s my hope that the more reasoneable provinces in Canada will not have to have their game released delayed as Canadian bilingual versions are released months after their English counterparts.