France, perhaps best known for its wine and cheese, is also home to a teeming gaming ecosystem. Despite the country’s relatively small size, its gaming and e-sports sector ranks in the global top ten. The country boasts a significant national population of gamers, with over 40 million reported users and a market revenue that is projected to soon reach $8.36 billion USD.
Between e-sports, strategy games and RPGs, France is leading the way in gaming innovation. Read on to learn about the top companies in the sector.
Gaming Companies in France
- 2K
- Homa
- Old Skull Games
- tms
- Voodoo
Gaming Companies in France to Know
The gaming studio 2K designs, engineers and publishes interactive multiplayer games. Its titles span the sports, strategy and storytelling game categories, with an emphasis on sports titles. One of the company’s strongest performers is the NBA 2K franchise, which simulates play and fantasy drafts within a quasi-realistic universe of American professional basketball. NBA 2K is noted by gaming critics for its depth of concept and realism, which includes mixed reality features that use Oculus Rift and Meta Quest VR devices.
Enchanted Games Studios is a creative gaming development studio that creates mobile gaming titles. The company’s ethos focuses on narrative depth and production quality. Founded in 2020 by a single game developer and built on the Roblox platform, Enchanted Games’ current titles include The Biome Obby, The PVP and Geral Quiz.
TMS is a Japanese anime production studio. This style of animation uses hand drawings with specific character features such as large expressive eyes to create visual stories. The French outpost of the company’s Tokyo headquarters creates animation assets for the gaming industry as well as for anime franchises and has collaborated with Nippon TV to create animated narratives based on video game titles.
Gaming technology firm Homa uses data to provide insights for strategic development to game authors and publishers. Its goal is to dial in user experience by analyzing data that provides information on how and why people respond to different game features and experiences.
Old Skull Games is a long-established game development studio that has been publishing new titles for console and mobile gaming since 2012. Its business model offers “f2p,” or free-to-play, games that are monetized through in-game purchases and advertising. The company works with a team of in-house creators as well as a stable of independent contractors who bring in fresh ideas.
QUANTIC DREAM is a studio that creates AAA games. This gaming designation refers to titles with extremely high production values, typically created with generous budgets and distributed through major publishing channels. Beyond premium user experience, such games are created using a collaborative workflow closer to film production than standard gaming operations.
Voodoo is a French gaming studio that creates games in the “hypercasual” category, which refers to games that are simple, single-layer and repeat a single mechanism. Voodoo’s hypercasual titles include the Lord of the Board backgammon game and the Block Jam puzzle title. The company specializes in fast prototyping and launches, which has contributed to its runaway success with certain titles.
Square Enix is a multinational entertainment conglomerate that functions as a holding company for numerous smaller companies. Its digital entertainment portfolio includes a gaming division that holds IP for the Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest and Space Invaders franchise, each of which is a multititle series with strong branding and a loyal user base. The company’s gaming operations focus on role playing games in which players enter immersive narrative worlds.
SteelSeries is a hardware and technology company that makes products for serious, professional gamers. It offers tools and gear that optimize in-game experience, such as headsets, microphones, controllers and trackpads. These products are designed to give players a competitive edge and to increase the immersive quality of games and e-sport experiences. The company’s French teams are focuses on audio processing technology and software engineering.
Atari is an iconic video game developer that has been publishing games and franchises since its founding in 1972. Its vintage titles include Pong, Ghostbusters and Centipede. In its modern era, the company focuses on reimagining its classic titles for contemporary gaming technology.
