Okay I can understand that cultures and countries want to keep their individuality and are worried about the big bad Englishman taking over… okay no I don’t understand it at all.
It’s a language, if you don’t like it then don’t buy English products. This isn’t being forced on you… unless that is you live in Canada.
So if you are one of the unlucky people in Canada whose first language is English then prepared to be discriminated against. Quebec (capital of Canada) has decided to outlaw the sale of any game that doesn’t have French voice overs or at the very least, French subtitles.Â
Granted the idea is great, except that all that is going to happen is that most games will now no longer be on sale in Canada as the market just isn’t big enough for a lot of smaller titles to justify the cost.
Granted this law only currently applies to the State of Quebec but you can imagine that developers and publishers will be a little worried about this, and the developers in Montreal must be checking the books to see how cheap it would be to move to America where they will be safe to make a game in any language they like.
Political correctness has taken it’s next victim.
Source of Story and awesome image: Joystiq
Last Updated: April 3, 2009
easy
April 3, 2009 at 14:36
thats absurd.
what about other forms of entertainment? surely movies, television programs and theatre would have to follow suit.
canadian’s sure are strange people sometimes
janrik
April 3, 2009 at 14:37
You can not do shooters in French…
the moment somebody points a gun at a frenchie, they have to surrender.
It just wont work. :pirate:
PaasHaas
April 3, 2009 at 14:49
I would gladly support a law that forces all japanese games to have english subtitles/text :ninja:
imajin
April 3, 2009 at 17:32
Quebec should just declare itself a PAL region, et voilà , all the games they get will have some sort of French due to the localization of PAL releases for the European territories, which includes France 😎
BHW
April 3, 2009 at 21:34
Ottawa is the capital of Canada – Quebec is the state where most of the French speaking Canadians live with Montreal as its capital.
LazySAGamer
April 3, 2009 at 22:57
Ah thanks for clearing that up
LazySAGamer
April 3, 2009 at 22:57
10 points to you sir 😆
Milesh Bhana
April 4, 2009 at 11:48
well, in Germany most of their movies are dubbed in German.
I think they should make that law for SA. In on-line chatter is the benchmark, FPS games would be awesome in Afrikaans. 🙂
EchoZA
April 4, 2009 at 16:13
Vernon FTW 🙂
Lydon
April 4, 2009 at 18:43
I don’t see what’s so bad about it. It’s about cultural preservation. Considering a large part of Quebec consists of French speaking people, French entertainment is a logical choice.
LazySAGamer
April 5, 2009 at 01:06
and that’s the crux of it.. Choice… Why make it a regulation? Rather just allow people to choose if they only want to support French entertainment or not.
2Three
April 5, 2009 at 22:51
First, Canada has provinces, not states – and Quebec City (not Montreal) is the capital of the province of Quebec. 🙂
And second, this isn’t being made a regulation simply because there are a lot of French speaking people in Quebec, it’s actually the official language of the province. This won’t affect the other provinces where English is the official language, and it just means that folks in Quebec will have to wait a bit longer after the release of a game for the French version to become available.
LazySAGamer
April 6, 2009 at 01:18
Or no French version will ever be created… mind you with over 7 million people living in Quebec the market may be big enough to convince companies to Frenchify their games
Lydon
April 6, 2009 at 09:44
Since it’s only a province, people can simply order english-only titles from another province.
Let’s put it this way – I’m sure in the minds of those governing culture > > > > > gaming by far. I don’t think they really give two hoots about whether or not companies will just skip releasing their games in the province.
WitWolfyZA
April 6, 2009 at 11:19
your aiming at FF13 arent ya :biggrin: