Question 13547 — digital

Summary

Mr. Stéphane Trompille draws the attention of the Secretary of State to the Minister of the Economy and Finance and the Minister of Action and Public Accounts, responsible for digital affairs, to the parasitism of the digital distribution of PC games caused by the illicit market. At the end of the 1990s, the digital distribution of PC games was carried out with the implementation of Digital right management (DRM) “PC Centric”: the host PC authorized installing the video game only a limited number of times on the same machine. Today, the digital distribution of PC games has evolved and responds to a “User Centric” DRM system: the installation is linked to a single user account and no longer to a PC. The popularization of this system, linking the installation of the game to a user account, established the current characteristics of digital distribution and made most of the players who offered “PC Centric” DRM technologies. The installation of the video game is now done using a physical or dematerialized activation key, attached to the user account, thus allowing the game to be downloaded and installed via a centralized platform. This activation model has become the standard. Activation keys can be purchased directly in stores but also from activation platforms (Steam, Origin or even Uplay), which have their own online store. This new form of digital distribution has generated a considerable perverse effect: the emergence and consolidation of a large-scale illicit market. This illicit industry was created through the collection of legal activation keys, obtained from legal platforms but using stolen bank cards or spoofed electronic wallets. Another process consists, for sites hosted outside the European area, of avoiding effective taxation and thus taking advantage of this price difference with the official market to parasitize competition. Then, the activation keys are resold between users or on unofficial sites. In its white paper, the national video game union estimates “the turnover [of the main illicit video game marketplaces] around a billion euros, making these players heavyweights in the sector. The shortfall for the tax administration is not anecdotal. Neither does the parasitic impact on competition: this would potentially represent a third of the games activated on Steam.” The main players in today's illicit market are mostly housed in Hong Kong or in the countries from the east, but also sometimes in Europe. The neglect of public authorities hinders French developers from carrying out their activities and also leads to consumer misunderstanding of prices, in addition to causing significant harm to legal distributors of video games. He therefore asks the Government's position on these issues and whether it plans to take measures aimed at rebalancing the transport market. digital distribution.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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