Wikipedia
Maléfices ( French > "Evil Acts" or "Hexes") is a French role-playing game created by Michel Gaudo and Guillaume Rohmer. It was published by game company Jeux Descartes from 1985 to 1994 and was the first original French-language horror role-playing game. Although it had well-crafted adventures, it lost market share to Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu, which expanded on the fanbase that Maléfices itself had created. This is ironic because Call of Cthulhu was printed earlier under license by Jeux Descartes as l'Appel de Cthulhu, starting with their translation of Chaosium's Second Edition of the rules in 1984. In 2004 Maléfices was reprinted by Editions du Club Pythagoras, which has begun making new material and sells PDFs of old material.
The core rules have been published in three editions: the 1st in 1985 and 2nd (Revised Edition) in 1988 by Jeux Descartes. The expanded 3rd Edition (288 pages long - triple the size of the earlier volumes!) was printed in 2004 by Editions du Club Pythagoras and reprinted in 2007 by Asmodée Éditions.