By: Dale Dietrich
The French Parliament has approved tax credits for local producers of video games “with a cultural dimension”. The credits can finance up to 20 percent of a company’s production costs to a maximum of 3 million euros (close to $4 million U.S.) a year. Whether these credits will violate the E.U.’s subsidy prohibitions is still to be determined.
Sources: Reuters | joystiq | GamePolitics.co
The EU is investigating whether France’s proposed tax breaks for French video games industry (a tax credit worth 20 percent of the cost of the game) are designed to support “genuine cultural projects” and therefore legal under EU rules, or harm comptetition and trade between member states, and therefore offside EU rules.
Sources: Gamasutra | Middle East Times (AFP) | International Herold Tribune | Forbes (AFX) | San Jose Mercury News | Business Week | European Union Press Release
On September 11, 2006, U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilken assessed more than $9 million in penalties against France-based mod-chip maker Divineo for trafficking in mod chips and the associated HDLoader software. HDLoader allows users to copy their games from CD/DVD disks to their hard drive. Despite legitimate use by legions of honest gamers, this mod-chip/software bundle works by circumventing copy protection measures contained on the game CD/DVD and thereby contravenes the controversial DMCA.
Dale’s Comment: Mod-chips and software like HDLoader is hated by game developers/publishers because they are commonly used to distribute pirated video games on PS2 consoles. For honest gamers, they are a terrific way to install all purchased games on a hard drive so that they can be quickly and conveniently served up like records in a jukebox. Without it gamers must manually flip game disks each time they want to change the current game.
Sources: Gamasutra | Digital Trends | GameDaily.biz | Businesswire | ars technica | Next Generation | Engadget | ESA Press Release