Presentation
On Monday, June 8, and Tuesday, June 9, 2026, the symposium “Online Video Games: Playing, Studying, Preserving” took place, co-organized by the École nationale des chartes – PSL and the BnF, through the efforts of Henri Bazan, David Benoist, Emmanuelle Bermès, and Christophe Carini-Siguret.
Building on the initial insights shared by Ludivine Mouysset and Professor Julie Groffe-Charrier, Pierre Xavier Chomiac de Sas and Sophie Roman participated in a roundtable discussion titled “Rules of (Online) Games.” Moderated by Christophe Carini-Siguret, the session also featured law professor Geoffray Brunaux (University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne).
The roundtable discussion addressed several key aspects of video game preservation, particularly from a legal perspective.
Watch the discussions from the second day here:
Preserving Online Games: A Legal Conundrum
Preserving online games faces a dual legal and technical hurdle that complicates their protection as cultural heritage. Copyright law grants publishers an absolute monopoly over the reproduction of their titles, with no effective legal exceptions. Locked behind End User License Agreements (EULAs), it appears legally impossible to circumvent the publishers’ authority over their games—a situation further complicated by their digital-only nature.
Subject to patches and updates that alter mechanics, content, and rules, online games exist only as a succession of evolving digital versions. Added to this are player-created in-game elements that enrich the collective experience but defy stable capture. This dynamic relies on technical dependencies controlled by the publisher, making external preservation difficult without the transfer of expertise, proprietary tools, or even ongoing maintenance.
Under these conditions, preservation methods for online games are notably fragmented and haphazard. Legal avenues—such as voluntary deposit by the publisher or agreements with heritage institutions—remain marginal. This has fostered the rise of alternative solutions like emulators, private servers, fan games, and ROM hacks, all of which operate in a state of significant legal uncertainty, depending on the aggressiveness of publishers whose content is being “hacked,” partially copied, or outright counterfeited.
Beyond the video game itself, there is interest in preserving the gaming experience. The volume of digital content created by users is immense: audiovisual gameplay captures; guides showcasing the game, its characters, and its content; forums; mod-sharing communities; and so on. This fragmentation of sources runs up against digital-era obstacles, including technical and legal dependence on the hosting platforms, a lack of shared resources, and the absence of a comprehensive preservation policy.
Law and Video Games: Protecting the Value of Video Games
Video game publishers exercise both legal and technical control over their games—control that may conflict with the interests of other parties seeking to preserve the game’s asset value (such as players, archivists, etc.).
Legal Control. As the game’s producer and distributor, the publisher enjoys copyright and intellectual property protection over all elements associated with the title. These necessary prerogatives result in legal restrictions on any use or reuse of the games—even for purposes of preservation or archiving, where the game is viewed as a creative work.
The publisher’s exploitation rights and licenses are exercised through the End-User License Agreement (EULA), which binds every player, consumer, or user of the games, services, and content.
In recent years, however, several legal challenges have been brought to contest the legality of these provisions—particularly regarding consumer law (obligations of conformity, unfair contract terms, information requirements, etc.) and certain European regulations (such as the GDPR and the protection of players’ personal data).
Technical Control. On a more practical level, video game studios or publishers retain technical control over the game and the practical conditions of access to it. They are free to modify their games—sometimes significantly—through automatic or forced updates and patches. Such modifications may be driven by security considerations, the need to optimize the user experience, or a desire to re-evaluate the game’s business model.
In this context, Geoffray Brunaux and Sophie Roman have highlighted the legal issues surrounding certain potentially unlawful practices—specifically “nerfing,” which involves reducing the attributes of a weapon, character, or in-game item. Beyond the unilateral modification of game content, the publisher’s technical control also extends to access to the game—a particularly important aspect for games accessible via online servers.
Indeed, players lose access to the game—in which they have sometimes invested significantly—if the servers are shut down. This issue has notably provided an opportunity to discuss the California “Protect Our Games Act” bill, as well as the viability and control of private servers as a potential solution.
Read our overview of the shutdown of the game The Crew and its consequences, particularly the “Stop Killing Games” initiative.
Video Game Law: Preserving the Gaming Experience
The roundtable discussion provided an opportunity to examine the issue of video game heritage through the lens of players and their genuine contribution to the medium. Players modify, create, and share content—subject to varying levels of publisher authorization or tolerance. This user appropriation raises a central legal question: where do player rights end, and where does the publisher’s exclusivity begin?
Permitted creations: when the publisher opens the door. Some publishers place user creation at the heart of their business model. Map editors (e.g., The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Mario Maker), sandbox games (Minecraft, Roblox), and platforms with built-in tools (Media Molecule’s Dreams) provide players with an explicit contractual framework. Terms of Service generally grant a license to use assets while retaining intellectual property rights for the publisher. Creation is permitted and regulated—and sometimes monetized—but never fully liberated.
Tolerated creations: the legal ambiguity of mods and UGC. Mods and user-generated content (UGC) exist in a well-known legal gray area. Technically, modifying a game without authorization can constitute an infringement of the publisher’s rights regarding reproduction and adaptation.
In practice, most major publishers turn a blind eye—or even actively encourage modding communities (e.g., Bethesda, Valve)—provided the creations remain non-commercial. This tolerance is fragile: it rests on a unilateral decision by the publisher that can be revoked at any time, granting the creator no vested rights.
Illicit creations: when creation trumps the law. Some creations cross the legal line into illegality. Examples include fan games that utilize protected universes and characters (such as Pokémon Uranium, shut down by Nintendo in 2016), ROM hacks that exploit pirated files, and legal cases like Dstockage; these illustrate how rights holders respond to unauthorized uses. These creations, even when driven by sincere love for the franchise, constitute counterfeits within the meaning of the Intellectual Property Code. Well-intentioned motives do not constitute a legal justification under French law—only express authorization from the publisher could legitimize such uses.
Protecting a player’s personality attributes: pseudonyms, avatars, and digital identity in video games
Players’ engagement with video games goes beyond mere content creation; it also involves constructing a distinct digital identity—such as a pseudonym, avatar, or competitive handle—that can acquire genuine legal and economic value, particularly within the esports landscape. While French law provides no unified protection framework for these attributes, they can be safeguarded through a combination of regulations.
First, a pseudonym constitutes personal data under the GDPR if it allows for the identification of its holder, thereby requiring publishers and organizers to comply with the associated obligations. Second, it can be registered as a trademark, provided it possesses sufficient distinctiveness—a robust but non-automatic form of protection that professional players and esports organizations have already utilized to combat cybersquatting.
When a third party exploits the renown of a player or avatar without authorization, a claim of “parasitism”—based on Article 1240 of the Civil Code—offers an additional legal avenue that does not require a direct competitive relationship. Together, these mechanisms create a layered protection strategy, though their effectiveness relies on proactive legal planning. Players who fail to secure their identity beforehand often find themselves defenseless against publishers’ Terms of Use, which may have required them to assign—sometimes unwittingly—a significant portion of the rights to their own avatar.
Video Game Law: Defending Derivative Works
Beyond modifying the game itself, users exploit video game content in various ways that raise significant copyright issues. Creating audiovisual content—such as “Let’s Plays,” Twitch streams, and YouTube videos—involves capturing and publicly broadcasting protected works. While some publishers have established regulated monetization policies (e.g., YouTube’s Content ID, or streaming licenses from Nintendo or Microsoft), there is no uniform legal framework in France to legitimize these practices.
The creation of guides, wikis, character analyses, and discussion forums raises questions regarding the partial reproduction of protected graphic and narrative elements—issues tempered in practice by publisher tolerance, as they view these activities as a source of free exposure. Even more ambiguous are alternative or transformative creations, such as machinimas, parodies, and works that use game assets for satirical or artistic purposes.
In certain cases, these uses may rely on the parody exception set out in Article L. 122-5 of the Intellectual Property Code—provided they do not damage the original work’s image or cause confusion among the public.
Charity events offer a particularly revealing example of these tensions. Marathons like Awesome Games Done Quick (AGDQ) publicly broadcast protected games over several consecutive days to millions of viewers, all to benefit charitable organizations.
The non-profit nature of these events and their positive impact on a title’s visibility lead most publishers to tolerate—or even support—them, without necessarily granting a formal license. However, this benevolent tolerance remains precarious; it rests on no solid legal foundation and could be challenged at any time. More broadly, it illustrates the unsuitability of the existing legal framework for the reality of contemporary video gaming practices, as well as the need for both organizers and creators to secure their activities through explicit agreements with rights holders.
