Quebec Says 'Non' To English-Only Video Games

daveofdoom writes "The French-Canadian government of Quebec is saying 'non' to English-only video games if French versions are available. 'It's causing a lot of consternation among retailers and gamers alike, who fear the rules will lead to delays in video games arriving in the province, and may not accomplish what the law intends, which is to promote and protect the French language.' This is a ridiculous rule, as game companies can simply stop creating French versions of games to bypass the restriction."

Comments

Most of these rules are.

[Anonymous Coward]

Most rules about French in Canada are ridiculous. Government officials need to be bilingual regardless of capability of doing a job, for example. Firing a native French speaker from government is almost impossible, regardless of how badly they do at their job. And if people in government has what is deemed an inadequate level of french, the government pays for one-on-one french lessons INSTEAD of for doing your job, and instead of for french classes with other people learning it or instead of for a government billet in a french-speaking area where you can learn the language through immersion. Do you have any idea what that costs that taxpayer? Or how stupid it is?

Protecting cultural heritage is one thing, but this is even worse than political correctness run amuck, because it's groupthink feeding into this mentality that it's bigoted to be against these policies, even when they're ridiculously inefficient.

To make matters worse, I don't believe the requirements are nearly as bilingual in the other direction.

Re:Most of these rules are.

[vorpal22]

While I do agree that some of the Quebec language laws are a bit over the top and end up having stupid results, I feel like I must correct and question assertions made in your post in the following paragraph:

And if people in government has what is deemed an inadequate level of french, the government pays for one-on-one french lessons INSTEAD of for doing your job, and instead of for french classes with other people learning it or instead of for a government billet in a french-speaking area where you can learn the language through immersion.

Living in Ottawa, I have several government working friends who have been provided with government funded French language education (and paid for doing so), and none of them have had the privilege of one-on-one lessons: they all attended group-based French language classes, and they were required to pass in order to continue on in their roles.

I don't see how this is much different than your employer investing in job training, and I'm not opposed to it. Furthermore, the vast majority of this occurs in the Ottawa area, I'd suspect, and as most of the population here speaks French, you'd be hard pressed to find a much more immersive environment.

If anyone here is interested, here's an article written up about Quebec and their language laws: The Language Laws of Quebec

Re:many questions

[Bieeanda]

If there is a French version, it's illegal to stock only the English version. The problem appears to be twofold:

First, if the game is scheduled to be released in both English and French, the stores have to wait until the French version is available. Retailers are worried that gamers will turn to imports if they can't get the hot new titles immediately after launch.

Second, this presupposes that there is an equal demand for games in French, to demand for games in English. The language police can be right fucking bastards about enforcing this sort of thing, so retailers are worried about having to buy more stock than they can guarantee moving. Margins are already pretty thin, so that's a definite concern.

EFIGS

[tylersoze]

In my experience as a game developer for nearly 10 years who has worked for a few companies, I can tell you that every game I've ever worked on has always had at least EFIGS (English, French, Italian, German, Spanish) localization (with a French North American SKU). I really don't see this as being much of an issue for most decent sized game publishers.

The last part of game testing usually involves all sorts of fun localization issues and me winding up wishing every would just speak English after dealing with some weird Czech voice over bug or something. :) The Sims was probably the worst, I believe they did a localization for every language known to man.

Not so much!

[PIBM]

If you had taken the time to read about this specific thing, you'd learn that not only is this old news (this was done in 2007!), but that the CANADIAN association of video game signed this bill.

Also, any computer game has been subject to this exact bill since october 2007. The only difference is that now, console games are also covered.

If you took the time to read the description, you'd have learned that distributor are mandated to offer the french version of a game provided that it already exists somewhere else.

The bill specifies that any reseller can sell the english version as long as they also offer the french version if it exists. I'm a french quebecer and I kept buying english computer games without noticing anything.

The only problem that I heard about caused by this bill so far has been with world of warcraft, for which the french version was originally built for playing on european servers, so you could not play with a friend who bought the english version...

  You might find this interesting:
http://www.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/francisation/consommateurs/secteur/jeux_video/jeuxvideo.html

Re:Not so much!

[SpiderClan]

I have two replies to this. First, the Canadian association of video games is comprised of game developers. It is in no way representative of Canadians and they were responding to the Quebec government in the way that made the most financial sense to them.

Second, I think the GP was slightly exaggerating, or doesn't know much beyond his small area of Canada. The problem isn't with those who consider themselves Quebecois, since that would be both unreasonable and, in many cases, hypocritical. The problem is with those who consider themselves Quebecois as opposed to Canadian, and don't believe/recognize that they can be both.

Re:Choice fodder!

[dryeo]

Why can't Americans accept that they couldn't beat the French-Canadians?
FYI the last time they surrendered was something like 1759. They beat George Washington in 1754. They didn't surrender when you tried to force them to join your war of separation in 1775, once again beating Washington and burned down the White House in 1814 when you also tried to invade.

Re:Choice fodder!

[deraj123]

Actually, people do mind. My city (Nashville) recently held a special election with the attempt to mandate that our city government only do business (and provide services, with a few exceptions) in English. We minded a great deal and successfully voted the bigoted, short-sighted bill down.

Re:Choice fodder!

[cvd6262]

And isn't WE taking "credit" for 1812 kind of like THEY taking credit for the Seven Years/French-Indian/War of the Conquest?

I mean, Canada was no more itself in 1812 than the U.S. was in 1763.