The Canadian Press reports that the Quebec government and the Entertainment Software Alliance have reached an agreement under which all video games sold in Quebec will be translated into French.
Quebec Gov’t Strikes Deal with ESA on French Language Video Games
August 19, 2007
Share this post
3 Comments

Law Bytes
Episode 257: Lisa Given on What Canada Can Learn From Australia’s Youth Social Media Ban
byMichael Geist

February 9, 2026
Michael Geist
Episode 256: Jennifer Quaid on Taking On Big Tech With the Competition Act's Private Right of Access
February 2, 2026
Michael Geist
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 255: Grappling with Grok – Heidi Tworek on the Limits of Canadian Law
January 26, 2026
Michael Geist
December 22, 2025
Michael Geist
December 8, 2025
Michael Geist
Search Results placeholder
Recent Posts
Time for the Government to Fix Its Political Party Privacy Blunder: Kill Bill C-4’s Disastrous Privacy Rules
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 257: Lisa Given on What Canada Can Learn From Australia’s Youth Social Media Ban
Court Ordered Social Media Site Blocking Coming to Canada?: Trojan Horse Online Harms Bill Clears Senate Committee Review
An Illusion of Consensus: What the Government Isn’t Saying About the Results of its AI Consultation
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 256: Jennifer Quaid on Taking On Big Tech With the Competition Act’s Private Right of Access

Great!
Just great… Another stupid political move that will serve no real purpose and will limit the products available to us in Qubec. When will the government understand that with only 7 million people, we aren’t a big enough market to force our policies on the world? If a content producer wasn’t going to translate it in the first place, this won’t change that. They’ll just choose not to sell it here.
I disagree
To have more game available in French in Qubec is good news.
As I understand it, this deal will only force games that are translated anyway (for Europe) to be made available in French over here too. If it’s the case, it only means that games available in French in France, for example, should be localized from PAL to NTSC so they can be played in French here too.
If that’s the case, what’s the problem?
Of course, if Qubcois gamerss
are denied some games because the publisher don’t want to pay for the localization or because the law is too strict to allow games that are not translated (what happens to indie games in that case?), then everybody lose.
Can you say “mail order”?
How do they define ‘sold in Qubec’? I can see Amazon’s sales of video games to Qubec going up… then I can see an amazon.qc.ca shop that doesn’t sell Engll
ish only games 🙂