Video games: an elusive strategic sector

The video game industry generated more than 200 billion dollars in 2025 and is expected to pass the 300 billion mark by 2028, with nearly 3.5 billion players worldwide. Seen at first as a niche hobby, video games have, in 50 years, become the world’s leading cultural industry, ahead of film and music combined.

In parliamentary reports, ministerial statements and Senate hearings, the French video game industry is often described as a “strategic sector”. But as soon as one leaves the explanatory memoranda behind and enters positive law, the classification becomes blurred: depending on whether one listens to politicians, reads the French General Tax Code or consults the Monetary and Financial Code, video games appear in turn as a fully recognised strategic sector, a generously supported one or a completely peripheral one. This ambiguity outlines a paradoxical public policy: rhetoric of strategic inclusion and massive support on the one hand, the absence of any defensive safety net on the other.

I. France: a celebrated video game nation

A. An established video game power

The domestic market alone justifies the attention of the public authorities. In 2025, video games remained the country’s leading creative and cultural industry, with revenue of 5.856 billion euros, up 2.9%, its second-highest level ever. Consoles dominate with 44% of the market, mobile reaches 30% and PC 26%. Behind this solidity lie structural changes: physical sales are declining while revenue from DLC and microtransactions jumped 51%, a sign of a shift towards digital models controlled by platforms.

France is not just a consumer market. It ranks third in Europe and is among the world’s top ten, with nearly 1,300 companies and some 20,000 jobs, 80% of them on permanent contracts, a notable exception among cultural industries largely structured around intermittent work. It has a global giant, Ubisoft, a dense network of studios and renowned training programmes, such as Cnam-Enjmin in Angoulême.

B. Thirty years of success, global recognition

This leadership is nothing new. As early as the late 1980s, when French studios were producing with resources incomparable to those of the American and Japanese giants, being on the margins became a creative strength: Éric Chahi’s Another World (1991), Frédérick Raynal’s Alone in the Dark (1992), which invented survival horror, and Michel Ancel’s Rayman (1995) left their mark on the history of the medium. The next generation confirmed this with Ubisoft’s Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2003) and then Assassin’s Creed (2007). The last fifteen years have seen the emergence of an ecosystem of mid-sized studios combining critical acclaim and commercial success: Life is Strange at Don’t Nod, A Plague Tale at Asobo, Dead Cells at Motion Twin, Sifu at Sloclap, Stray at BlueTwelve…

The high point came from Los Angeles. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the first game from the Montpellier studio Sandfall Interactive, released on 24 April 2025, sold more than five million copies in less than six months and eight million after a year. At the Game Awards on 11 December 2025, it won nine awards out of twelve nominations, including Game of the Year, Best Narrative and Best Art Direction, setting a record for a single title and marking the first time a French game had been crowned in this category.

This performance gives burning relevance to the thesis put forward by the think tank Fondapol in its 2023 study: France has what it takes to become Europe’s video game champion, provided it turns its French Touch, that historic ability to produce original works on small budgets, into an assertive French Pride.

C. Political and rhetorical strategic status: words without law

This industrial reality is matched by an omnipresent discursive register: that of political speeches. A declaratory category used in ministerial addresses, parliamentary reports and interministerial strategy documents, it creates no rights but prepares, legitimises or anticipates public action. Legal scholars would see it as soft law, in Catherine Thibierge’s sense: a word that serves less to state the law than to tell the story of a priority.

At the Assises du jeu vidéo on 24 October 2024, the former Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, used the language of sovereignty: the State must support the industry in the face of “external hazards” because there is “a real sovereignty issue” at stake, and she proposed a video game “Team France” modelled on French Tech. In February 2026, the Minister Delegate for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Affairs, Anne Le Hénanff, spoke of a “strategic sector for the economy and for France’s cultural influence”. The Senate had laid the groundwork as early as 2013 with a report entitled “Video games: an innovative cultural industry for our regions”, updated in January 2026, and the France 2030 investment plan lists the industry among those to be supported in the name of European cultural sovereignty.

This declaratory classification legitimises and gives substance to public policies in favour of video games, organises institutional dialogue between the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of the Economy (Bercy), the National Centre for Cinema (CNC), the publishers’ association SELL and the national video game union SNJV, and serves as leverage for private players to demand more from the State. Its limits mirror these strengths: it creates no enforceable right, does not bind the administration beyond the mandate of the minister who utters it, and rarely survives changes of government. It acts as a symbolic substitute for legal strategic status.

II. A supported champion

Politicians have not merely made fine speeches. Intellectual property law values and protects the intangible assets of video game companies.

In addition to the provisions of the Intellectual Property Code, France has built over the past 20 years one of the most comprehensive toolkits in Europe, based on two approaches: tax incentives and direct aid.

A. The video game tax credit

The most tangible embodiment of strategic status is the video game tax credit (CIJV), codified in Article 220 terdecies of the French General Tax Code. Created in 2007 in response to the exodus of talent to Quebec, and approved by the European Commission as State aid with a cultural purpose, it defines positively, and unusually for the French statute book, what a video game is: “any leisure software made available to the public, incorporating elements of artistic and technological creation, offering a series of interactions based on a scripted storyline or simulated situations”.

Under this scheme, companies subject to corporate income tax can deduct 30% of the expenses incurred in creating games approved by the National Centre for Cinema (CNC), up to 6 million euros per financial year, provided the game contributes to the development of French and European creation and contains neither pornographic sequences nor scenes of extreme violence, a regulatory legacy inherited from cinema.

Today, the scheme is worth around 40 million euros a year.

2026 marks a turning point. The 2024 Finance Act had capped the scheme at 31 December 2026, which the industry saw as an amputation. Concerned for a weakened industry, with Ubisoft’s reorganisation of 21 January 2026 having made an impression, the 2026 Finance Act (Law No. 2026-103 of 19 February 2026, Art. 42) extended it until 31 December 2031. The point is made by implication: a scheme presented as strategic can be put on hold by a simple budget cut.

However, the tool is not free from criticism. Fondapol notes that the credit is spread over three to four years, an advance that studios cannot carry alone: the publisher, which provides the funding and takes the risk, may then be tempted to divert the tax benefit to reduce its own costs rather than to fund the studio’s project.

B. General schemes serving innovative studios

The CIJV does not work alone. The research tax credit (CIR) under Article 244 quater B of the CGI covers 30% of R&D expenditure, capped at 100 million euros: rendering engines, behavioural AI and network technologies are eligible. Its extension for SMEs, the innovation tax credit (CII), renewed until 2027, covers 20% of prototype design expenditure, capped at 400,000 euros a year.

Likewise, young innovative company (JEI) status, reserved for SMEs less than eight years old whose R&D spending reaches 20% of their tax-deductible expenses, entitles them to exemptions from the business value-added contribution (CVAE), the business property contribution (CFE), property tax and employer social security contributions for staff assigned to research and development (R&D) activities, with the corporate income tax exemption now reserved for companies created before 2024. The 2024 Finance Act added the young growth company (JEC), open to companies whose R&D effort is between 5% and 20% of deductible expenses.

Finally, the so-called IP box regime under Article 238 of the CGI, introduced by the 2019 Finance Act, taxes income from the licensing or sale of copyright-protected software at a reduced rate of 10%. Video games, which are software at least in part according to the Cryo case law, are naturally eligible.

C. Transmedia taxation

The age of adaptations has also opened a third front. The film tax credit can help a video game work become even better known through cinema. It benefits the delegate producer of a work approved by the CNC, at 20% of technical expenses, rising to 30% for animation and French-language works; the audiovisual tax credit applies the same logic to television; the international tax credit targets French executive producers working for foreign productions, at 30%, rising to 40% for fiction with heavy digital processing, provided the work includes elements linked to French culture or territory. Tax policy therefore no longer conceives of video games in isolation, but as the centre of a transmedia ecosystem in which each spin-off has its own funding window.

D. Direct aid and financial instruments

Tax incentives are matched by budgetary interventions. The Video Game Support Fund (FAJV), created in 2008 and managed by the CNC since 2021, supports writing, design and pre-production through selective grants, worth around four million euros a year. Bpifrance provides loans, guarantees and equity, while IFCIC guarantees bank loans to cultural businesses, easing banks’ reluctance towards intangible and uncertain assets. The France 2030 plan, whose eighth objective is to put France at the forefront of the production of cultural content and immersive technologies, has added a capacity-building layer with “La Grande Fabrique de l’image”. The regions complete the system, with 41% of companies using their support, and hubs in Lille, Bordeaux, Montpellier and Lyon. Finally, for exports, the Game France pavilion accompanies studios at international trade shows.

Few sectors enjoy such a continuous chain: the CIR and CII fund upstream research, the FAJV and CIJV production, Article 238 exploitation, and the film and audiovisual tax credits the spin-offs.

Aware of the economic importance of the video game sector and of its cultural and industrial value, French politicians have encouraged the emergence of a public policy aimed at making France an attractive location for both domestic and foreign investment.

The question remains whether this upstream generosity has a defensive counterpart downstream.

III. A champion without armour

A. The only closed definition of a strategic sector

When it comes to foreign investment, France protects certain so-called “strategic” activities against such investment. Article L. 151-3 of the French Monetary and Financial Code makes them subject to prior authorisation by the Minister for the Economy where the activity involves the exercise of public authority or is likely to undermine public order, public security or national defence interests.

Article R. 151-3 draws up an exhaustive list from this: activities that are sensitive by nature (weapons, dual-use goods, cryptology, R&D in critical technologies such as cybersecurity, AI, robotics or semiconductors), essential infrastructure (energy, transport, water, health, telecommunications) and sovereign functions (political and general news press, police and gendarmerie, civil protection, prisons).

The mechanism is far from theoretical and does have concrete effects: 194 foreign investment projects did not go ahead in 2022. And yet video games appear nowhere in Article R. 151-3.

French studios can therefore be bought by non-European capital without passing through Bercy’s filter. By contrast, in the United States, CFIUS (the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States) monitors foreign investment in the gaming sector on national security grounds. Washington has already answered the question Paris has not asked.

Yet three arguments support listing video games as a strategic sector.

First, video games are technological. The sector is intensive in R&D, intellectual property and data. It handles critical technologies (generative AI, real-time 3D engines, cloud, behavioural data) that already appear in R. 151-3 under other headings: Unreal Engine is used for training armed forces as well as for industrial simulation. But because it has been classified, since Brussels approved it in 2007, under the heading “cultural industry”, video games escape the sovereign regime.

Second, video games are a medium and a vehicle for influence. The list already covers one medium, the political and general news press, since information can threaten democratic debate or encourage foreign interference. Yet video games produce the same effects with greater cognitive power: what applies to the press applies a fortiori to an interactive and immersive medium. Video games have indeed become a vehicle for influence. Where readers and viewers remain at a distance, players act. Research in cognitive psychology documents this singularity: the state of total absorption produced by play is accompanied by a measurable reduction in activity in the prefrontal cortex, the seat of critical judgement, while the circuits of emotion and reward are activated. Critical barriers are lowered, the boundary between user and avatar fades, and the message is neither read nor heard but lived from within, leaving a more lasting imprint than a political speech. State use of the medium has changed in nature over twenty years, moving from open recruitment, with free military simulators in the 2000s, to opaque forms that strategic institutes classify as hybrid warfare or cognitive warfare: the aim is no longer to enlist soldiers, but to shape perceptions durably.

Three vectors overlap here: the explicit narrative of the script, which designates allies and adversaries; the environmental narrative, non-verbal influence through immersion, where dozens of hours in a clean and safe virtual world alter the unconscious perception of a model of society; and finally the systemic narrative, the most subtle, where the rules carry an ideology, a management game coding democratic deliberation as slow and costly and authoritarian decision-making as fast and rewarded, teaching authoritarianism through practice. To this must be added player communities, which have become documented breeding grounds for political recruitment.

France would therefore not be defending a mere hobby: it would be defending a mass medium reaching more than 40 million players in the country and shaping imaginations far beyond.

Third, video games affect national sovereignty. The classic objection is that video games touch neither public order nor national defence, and therefore fall outside the scope of L. 151-3. The facts establish the opposite. A sector whose exports a State makes conditional on promoting its culture, whose acquisitions are driven by sovereign wealth funds implementing a national plan, and which serves as a vehicle for disinformation campaigns and a recruiting ground for extremists, is not on the margins of this definition: it is at its heart.

Video games do not need a new category; they already meet the legislative mandate. Only the regulatory list, drawn up before the medium took on this dimension, has not recorded it. The gap is not conceptual but chronological: the decree lags behind the world it claims to filter.

B. A battleground for State strategies

Video games have become a geopolitical and geo-economic battlefield. The concept of soft power, developed by Joseph Nye in 1990, finds its most complete application here: a country’s influence through its values, ideas and culture. Five positions stand out.

China has moved from discreet control to cultural assertion. After reigning through Tencent, a shareholder in Riot Games, Epic and Ubisoft, it now exports its mythology: the acquisition of stakes in Riot saw Chinese New Year celebrations appear in League of Legends, and Black Myth: Wukong (2024) demonstrated the commercial power of national heritage. It also masters the head-on approach: launched by Tencent in 2017, the mobile game Clap for Xi invited players to applaud Xi Jinping’s speech as fast as possible for nineteen seconds, and was downloaded more than 400 million times. The doctrinal turning point can be dated: in June 2025, seventeen government agencies published a directive supporting the export of games on the explicit condition that they promote Chinese culture.

Saudi Arabia is buying the ecosystem. Through the PIF (the Saudi sovereign wealth fund) and Savvy Games Group, endowed with 38 billion dollars, the Saudi authorities acquired Electronic Arts for 55 billion in 2025, Scopely for 4.9 billion, Niantic’s games division, ESL and FACEIT in esports, and 8.5% of Nintendo. More discreet but more revealing: the PIF held 6% of Take-Two, parent company of Rockstar Games, or 3 billion dollars and the second-largest stake in the publisher of Grand Theft Auto, a holding transferred to Savvy at the end of 2025 by a simple book entry between vehicles of the same State, a few months before the release of the most anticipated title of the decade. The PIF will also hold 93.4% of EA. A single State is thus the almost exclusive owner of the leading Western publisher and the reference shareholder of the second, without any hostile takeover or European public debate having taken place. The literature speaks of esportswashing.

The United States combines both registers. First, the explicit one: distributed free of charge from 2002 to 2022, America’s Army was an openly acknowledged recruitment tool in which only American soldiers were playable, available on all platforms and accessible from the age of thirteen. Then the implicit one, far more effective: Call of Duty, from Activision-Blizzard, the world’s leading publisher, and the best-selling shooter franchise in the world, has for twenty years shaped the imaginary geopolitics of hundreds of millions of players by assigning the roles of ally and enemy. The reboot of Modern Warfare (2019) went as far as staging the Highway of Death episode and attributing it to Russian forces, whereas the 1991 bombing was carried out by the US-led coalition: a narrative reattribution of a documented historical event, in a game sold in tens of millions of copies. And the upcoming release of GTA VI reminds us that the Grand Theft Auto series has for 30 years shaped our view of American society, notably through its critique of the American dream.

But America’s real power is infrastructural: Microsoft (Activision Blizzard, Xbox, Azure), Valve (Steam), Apple and Google (mobile stores), Epic (Unreal Engine). America does not buy the industry; it owns the pipes. Even a French studio with French capital depends on Steam to sell, on Unreal to develop and on AWS or Azure to host.

Japan, a soft power pioneer with its “Cool Japan” strategy institutionalised in 2010, spreads its culture through Sony and Nintendo, from the iconic character Mario to works such as Ghost of Tsushima. It is now being penetrated in turn: the PIF is Nintendo’s largest outside shareholder, and Tencent has taken a stake in Kadokawa. But its foreign exchange law (FEFTA), revised in 2019, lowers the prior notification threshold in sensitive sectors to 1% of capital, compared with 10% previously. The tool exists, and it is far more precise than ours.

Finally, Europe has no position: it has exposure. Supercell in Finland, Sumo in the United Kingdom, ESL in Germany, Quantic Dream in France. The trend even extends to cultural self-effacement: Polish studio CD Projekt Red’s upcoming Cyberpunk Orion will be developed from Boston to “Americanise” the game. Regulation 2019/452 only requires cooperation between national mechanisms, without harmonising their scope. The Union protects its semiconductors, networks and data. It lets its imaginations go.

On top of these strategies comes a more offensive register, sharp power, theorised by Christopher Walker: whereas soft power seduces through the attractiveness of a model, sharp power refers to the use of information to pierce, divide and distort the political environment of a third country. Atomic Heart (2023) is the textbook case. The title from the studio Mundfish, based in Cyprus, depicts a victorious and monumental USSR from which the gulags and famines have disappeared: an aesthetic rehabilitation making Soviet imagery desirable for a generation that never knew the Cold War, nostalgia for a past that never existed. The financial circuit is documented, with funds coming notably from GEM Capital, headed by a former executive of a subsidiary of the State giant Gazprom: a digital game sold in the West captures hard currency which, collected in a jurisdiction with proven confidentiality, can flow to actors under restrictions. Entertainment as a vehicle for circumventing sanctions. The Ukrainian response was symmetrical: GSC Game World made S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl (2024), developed under the bombs and then in exile in Prague, an act of national affirmation by switching from the Russian transcription Chernobyl to the Ukrainian Chornobyl and dropping Russian voice acting, at the cost of cyberattacks attributed to pro-Russian actors.

C. France, more target than player

The acquisition of Quantic Dream by China’s NetEase, completed in 2022, did not go through any administrative filter. In 2025, Tencent invested 1.16 billion euros to acquire 25% of the Ubisoft subsidiary housing Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry and Rainbow Six. Yet these investors are not neutral private funds: the PIF implements a State strategy, and Tencent operates within the framework of an influence policy defined by Beijing. Foreign investment screening was designed precisely for this scenario: acquisitions that are acts of foreign policy disguised as market transactions. It simply does not apply to video games. With a AAA game costing 150 to 200 million dollars and bank financing reluctant, studios depend on Asian, Saudi or American capital at the key moment of their growth. The fate of Sandfall Interactive, a small studio that has become a globally coveted asset, shows the risk: France excels at nurturing gems that it has no means of keeping.

We are faced with three-tier strategic status: political and rhetorical, which tells a story with no legal effect; fiscal (Art. 220 terdecies and 238 CGI), which encourages creation and exploitation on French soil; and sovereign (Art. L. 151-3 and R. 151-3 of the Monetary and Financial Code), which screens foreign investment. Video games occupy the first two tiers. They are absent from the third, the only one that protects. And the scope is shifting: in May 2025, the National Assembly’s Committee for the Evaluation and Control of Public Policies recommended extending it to data centres and sensitive real estate, while in January 2024 the European Commission proposed a revision of Regulation 2019/452 requiring all Member States to have a screening mechanism.

None of these texts mentions video games, but the debate remains open.

Conclusion: supporting is not protecting

One conclusion stands out: France has done its part. It has built an ecosystem few European countries can claim, with a global giant, a network of award-winning studios, renowned training programmes, regional clusters with the collaboration of many local authorities, and a pool of talent that has just won the first global crown for a French game. It has backed this industrial reality with an incentive toolkit of rare continuity, covering the entire life cycle of the work, and added a State discourse that hammers home its classification as a strategic sector. Support is neither stingy nor ambiguous.

What is missing is not money: it is law. Supporting a sector and protecting it follow two logics that globalisation has separated. The tax credit makes the gem grow; it does not stop anyone from buying it. The one-stop shop funds growth; it does not screen the capital that will buy it. And while Paris perfects its incentives, video games have become what our institutions still refuse to classify legally: an ideological, cultural and geo-economic battlefield.

The inconsistency is normative. French law protects the political and general news press against foreign takeovers because a medium shapes democratic debate. It leaves video games, more immersive, younger and larger, entirely outside Article R. 151-3, solely because a 2007 Brussels decision placed them in the “cultural industry” box. Consistency would require, at the very least, opening the debate on a targeted inclusion of their technological layer within the scope of foreign investment screening, at the very moment when that scope is being revised in both Paris and Brussels. Otherwise, France will keep doing what it does so well: train, fund, nurture, and then watch them leave. A strategic industry is not defended with explanatory memoranda. French Pride has the medal. It still needs the armour.

Sources

Legal texts

French General Tax Code (legifrance.gouv.fr)

• Art. 220 terdecies: video game tax credit (CIJV)
• Art. 238: IP box regime, income from protected software
• Art. 244 quater B: research tax credit (CIR) and innovation tax credit (CII)
• Art. 220 sexies: film tax credit
• Art. 220 septies: audiovisual tax credit
• Art. 220 quaterdecies: international tax credit
• Art. 44 sexies-0 A: young innovative company (JEI) and young growth company (JEC)

French Monetary and Financial Code

• Art. L. 151-3: prior authorisation of foreign investment
• Art. R. 151-3: exhaustive list of sensitive activities

Other French texts

• Law No. 2019-486 of 22 May 2019 (PACTE)
• 2024 Finance Act, CIJV capped at 31 December 2026
• Law No. 2026-103 of 19 February 2026, Art. 42, CIJV extended to 31 December 2031
• Decree No. 2022-1392 of 19 October 2022, “contribution to the development of creation” scale
• Decree No. 2023-1293 of 28 December 2023, foreign investment in France
• BOI-IS-RICI-10-50, tax administration guidance on the CIJV

Foreign and European texts

• Regulation (EU) 2019/452 of 19 March 2019, FDI screening, and the Commission’s proposed revision, January 2024
• Japan, Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Act (FEFTA), 2019 revision, notification threshold lowered from 10% to 1%
• United States, Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act (FIRRMA, 2018) and CFIUS jurisdiction

Case law

• Cass. 1re civ., 25 June 2009, Cryo, classification as a complex work

Market and industry data

• SELL, 2025 French market report, relayed by AFJV, « En 2025, le marché du jeu vidéo affiche sa solidité, en hausse de 3 % », Emmanuel Forsans, 31 March 2026 (link)
• AFJV, « L’industrie des jeux vidéo a franchi la barre des 200 milliards en 2025 », 30 June 2026 (link)
• AFJV, « L’industrie française du jeu vidéo compte 14 762 professionnel·les », 1 June 2026 (link)
• Newzoo, Global Games Market Report 2025 (link)
• Pipame / DGE, « Étude sur l’industrie du jeu vidéo en France : tissu économique et compétitivité », March 2021
• Médiamétrie / SELL, « Les Français et le jeu vidéo », 2025 edition

Public policy, taxation, legal scholarship

• Fondapol, Loïse Lyonnet and Pierre Poinsignon, L’industrie française du jeu vidéo. De la French Touch à la French Pride, July 2023 (link, link 2)
• CMS Francis Lefebvre, Christophe Leclère and Carl Meak, « Industrie du jeu vidéo : synthèse de certains dispositifs fiscaux en marge du crédit d’impôt jeux vidéo », Option Finance, 22 October 2024, updated 4 November 2025 (link)
• Yves Guillemot, « Le jeu vidéo : un secteur où la France est en pointe », Annales des Mines, Réalités industrielles, 2022/1, February 2022, p. 33-35, DOI 10.3917/rindu1.221.0033 (link)
• RFSIC, « Étude comparative des politiques publiques de soutien au secteur des jeux vidéo », 2025 (link)
• French Senate, André Gattolin and Bruno Retailleau, information report No. 852, « Jeux vidéo : une industrie culturelle innovante pour nos territoires », 18 September 2013
• French National Assembly, “Video games” study group (link)
• Le Parisien, « À l’Assemblée, ces députés fans de jeux vidéo », 17 February 2024 (link)
• French National Assembly, Committee for the Evaluation and Control of Public Policies, report on foreign investment screening, May 2025
• DG Trésor, annual report on foreign investment in France, 2022
• METI, “Cool Japan” strategy and Cool Japan Fund, created in November 2013 (link)

Influence, soft power, sharp power

Theoretical frameworks

• Joseph Nye, Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power, 1990, theory of soft power
• Christopher Walker, “What Is Sharp Power?”, Journal of Democracy (link)
• Ian Bogost, Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames, MIT Press (link)
• Marshall McLuhan, “the medium is the message”
• Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (link)
• Transient hypofrontality: (link)
• David Colon, La Guerre de l’information, Tallandier (link)
• Catherine Thibierge, work on soft law and normative force
• Pierre Lascoumes and Patrick Le Galès, Gouverner par les instruments
• Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, Rules of Play, 2003
• Mathieu Triclot, Philosophie des jeux vidéo
• Gonzalo Frasca, on the player’s decisions in the face of rules

Investigations and analyses

• Julian Alvarez, associate professor at the University of Lille, « Les jeux vidéo, outils de soft power ou vecteurs d’idéologies ? », The Conversation, 19 September 2024 (source for: America’s Army 2002-2022 and accessibility from age 13, Clap for Xi 2017 and 400 million downloads, Energyville and Chevron 2007, Chinese New Year in League of Legends, Ghost of Tsushima, Cyberpunk Orion and Americanisation from Boston, interpretive gap, McDonald’s video game) (link)
• École de guerre économique / Infoguerre, Jérémy Grammatica, « L’industrie du jeu vidéo est devenue un vecteur d’influence », 1 June 2026 (link)
• RTS, « Le jeu vidéo, terrain d’influence pour idéologues et grandes puissances », interview with Marijam Did, Tout un monde, 17 April 2026 (link)
• Marijam Did, Tout reste à jouer, Le Passager clandestin
• Socialter, Victoire Radenne, « Le jeu vidéo au cœur d’une bataille d’imaginaires », No. 75, online 29 April 2026 (link)
• Cultea, « Jeu vidéo et extrême droite : anatomie d’un entrisme culturel », 21 April 2026 (link)
• Lise Cottet, « Des hommes aux manettes : produire le genre dans l’industrie française du jeu vidéo », doctoral thesis, EHESS
• Maxime Lerolle, « Les jeux vidéo violents rendent-ils violent ? », CNRS Le Journal, 9 December 2025 (link)
• RTBF, « Chine et Arabie saoudite : comment le jeu vidéo est-il devenu une arme de soft power pour ces pays ? », 2 August 2025 (link)

Operations, controversies, actors

• VIGINUM / SGDSN, « Matriochka : une campagne prorusse ciblant les médias et la communauté des fact-checkers », February 2024 (link)
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019), controversy over the reattribution of the Highway of Death (1991) to Russian forces, Infinity Ward / Activision
• AIN.UA, “Atomic Heart will be released in February. It’s a Russian game backed by ex-Gazprom”, 17 January 2023 (link)
• Wired, on the development of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 in wartime (link)
• BleepingComputer, “STALKER 2 game developer hacked by Russian hacktivists” (link)

Equity stakes and capital transactions

• Reuters, “Saudi’s Public Investment Fund transfers stake in Take-Two Interactive”, 17 February 2026 (link)
• SEC, Schedule 13G/A, PIF / Savvy Games Group / Saudi Fourth Investment Company, 11,414,680 Take-Two shares, 31 December 2025, and PIF Form 13F, fourth quarter 2025 (link)
• Wall Street Journal, via a filing with CADE (Brazil), breakdown of EA’s capital after the buyout: PIF 93.4%, Silver Lake 5.5%, Affinity Partners 1.1%, November-December 2025
• Reuters, “Electronic Arts to go private in $55 billion deal with PIF, Silver Lake”, 29 September 2025 (link)
• Reuters, “Saudi wealth fund’s Savvy Games Group to invest $37.8 billion”, 29 September 2022 (link)
• Game Developer, “Saudi wealth fund increases stakes in EA and Take-Two Interactive”, stake raised from 5.3% to 6.8% of Take-Two, December 2022 (link)
• GameSpot, “All The Gaming Companies Saudi Arabia Owns Or Has Invested In”, 30 September 2025 (link)
• Gaming Campus, « Qui est Savvy Games Group, le nouveau géant saoudien du jeu vidéo ? » (link)
• Gus & Co, « Arabie saoudite : des investissements colossaux dans le jeu vidéo », 13 October 2025 (link)
• Tencent / Supercell, majority stake, 2016; Tencent / Sumo Group, 2021-2022; Tencent / Kadokawa, then Sony / Kadokawa, December 2024
• NetEase / Quantic Dream, acquisition completed in 2022

Rockstar, Take-Two, Grand Theft Auto VI

• Take-Two Interactive, “Rockstar Games Announces Pre-Orders for Grand Theft Auto VI”, 24 June 2026, release on 19 November 2026 at 79.99 dollars, franchise sales of more than 470 million copies (link)
• Rockstar Games Newswire, release moved to 19 November 2026 (link)
• IWGB, motions and statements relating to Rockstar North, projection of more than 10 billion dollars for the launch of GTA VI (link)
• Journal du Geek, « Rockstar Games remporte la première manche de son procès dans l’affaire des 34 employés licenciés », 13 January 2026 (link)
• Gamereactor, « Un tribunal du travail britannique donne tort à Rockstar », 19 June 2026 (link)
• Rockstar Mag’, « La date du procès est fixée, Rockstar perd une première bataille » (link)
• Gameshub, public launch of the Rockstar IWGB Game Workers Union, 28 May 2026 (link)

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and French successes

• CNC, « Clair Obscur : Expedition 33 aux Game Awards 2025 : un triomphe pour le jeu français », 12 December 2025 (link)
• AFJV, « Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, jeu de l’année aux Game Awards », 12 December 2025 (link)
• Le Monde, Pierre Trouvé, « Game Awards : Clair Obscur : Expedition 33 triomphe et remporte neuf statuettes », 12 December 2025
• IGN France, Jérémie Léger, « Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 passe la barre des 5 millions d’exemplaires vendus en moins de six mois », 8 October 2025
• Summary page: (link)

Moez RAISCo-founder, publication director and lawyer in intellectual property and digital law

https://lexludica.com/en/articles/video-games-elusive-strategic-sector