Cryo

Key takeaways

For years, the question remained open: is a video game first and foremost software, or an audiovisual work? With Cryo, the French Court of Cassation found a way out. A video game is a “complex work” that cannot be reduced to its code, however important it may be. Each building block therefore follows its own rules: the software regime for the program, ordinary copyright for the music, the graphics or the script.

This is known as the distributive approach. It fits the reality of a game, made of countless contributions, much better. But it comes at a price for studios: they have to secure their rights block by block, with the right contract for each creator.

The facts are very concrete. The publisher Cryo, in liquidation, had included in its games music from the repertoire of a collecting society, which claimed the corresponding royalties. The liquidator replied that a game is software, subject to a single regime. The Court rejected the argument in a formula that has remained famous: a video game is a complex work “which cannot be reduced to its software dimension alone, however important that may be”.

The ruling does not settle everything. It does not say whether the game, taken as a whole, is a collective work or a work of joint authorship, a decisive question for knowing who holds the rights. Plans for a specific legal status for video games, discussed in the early 2010s, came to nothing.