French President Emmanuel Macron announced Monday that France will launch an “International Video Game Festival,” framing video games as part of the country’s protected “cultural exception” alongside cinema and other creative arts.
Macron made the announcement at the Sommet Lumière, an international cinema and audiovisual conference held in the medieval town of Saint-Paul-de-Vence and co-chaired by Macron and South Korean President Lee Jae Myung.
“So, we will create an international video game festival, conceived from the outset as a major global gathering of creativity, innovation, gamers, and the industry,” Macron told the gathering.
“France’s major global video game successes highlight the richness of this creative output, which is, after all, an industry in its own right. We need to give it greater recognition and succeed in winning everyone’s support,” he added.
French broadcaster BFMTV reported that Macron appears to be aiming for something on the scale of Gamescom, the annual video game festival held in Cologne, Germany, whose 2026 edition wrapped up in late August. Sources told BFMTV the project originated with Macron and France’s National Centre of Cinema (CNC), with an eye toward drawing major international publishers and studios. The broadcaster noted that key details, including how the festival would be financed, have not been released — a notable gap given that Macron is scheduled to leave office in May 2027.
A Reversal From Earlier Criticism
Several French outlets observed that Monday’s announcement marks a shift from comments Macron made earlier this year criticizing video games. According to Le Monde, Macron said in a February interview with the digital outlet Brut that video games “condition” young people.
“When you spend hours playing a video game where you take out everyone, including Fortnite… Cool. That’s not what life is about. Because it distorts, if I may say so, your relationship with violence, and it conditions you. I’m in favor of families playing their part,” Macron said, according to Le Parisien.
Those remarks drew sharp pushback from France’s gaming community, including its National Video Game Union, which argued that scientific studies over the past 20 years “show that there is no correlation between video games and violence.”
Macron later addressed the backlash in a lengthy social media post, saying he has “always supported video games” and had misspoken. “What I announced at Brut, in response to that teacher who was shouting her anger, isn’t a ban on video games: it’s the launch of a scientific, collegial effort to face reality head-on. Calmly, lucidly, and with all stakeholders,” he wrote. He said he wanted researchers, scientists and clinicians to study the effects of gaming “without shortcuts.”
“You can love video games, be proud of them, and at the same time look without taboo at certain practices and their effects,” Macron wrote, accompanying the post with a copy of the “Ah sh*t, here we go again” meme from the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
Macron has previously celebrated French gaming successes publicly. Last year he used his Instagram account to congratulate developer Sandfall Interactive after its debut title, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, sold one million copies, calling it “one of the best-rated games in history, and yes, it’s French.” Months later, he congratulated the studio again when Expedition 33 became the first French video game to win Game of the Year at the 2025 Game Awards.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login