Greening the Games Industry

Good news and bad news – GTG Links 77

We're halfway through August – how time flies – and there's a host of news and interesting developments I've been saving up to share with savvy, switched-on readers. Not all of them are positively uplifting, but they are necessary datapoints, crucial context if we are

Zoonotic diseases & hope in shared struggle

I went to a book launch last night for an exciting new manuscript from a friend of mine, environmental journalist Michael Dulaney. It’s about zoonotic diseases, and the interface between human and nonhuman worlds, and it feels very timely given the new (and often deadly) bird flu strain currently

Energy Efficient Games in Godot + Ubisoft's annual report + PS5/6 info +AI out the wazoo – GTG Links 76

Some weekend reading (and watching!) for you. Why you should make energy efficient games Ashe Foltin (Bold Beetle Games & SGA energy efficiency network coordinator) gives a stellar talk at GodotCon 2026 on how and why to implement energy efficiency in games. Some good questions from the audience at the

Seven new ESG reports from China, Sweden, Finland and Japan

Owing to the long pause between posts we now have a huge backlog of game industry ESG reports to catch up on – so this post is entirely dedicated to getting through seven of the latest. Let's dive right in. NetEase ESG report It has numbers for the past

Emissions from playing CS2, DoTA2 + duplicate Twitch streams

Hello – I hope you haven’t missed me too much! I’ve been busy and feel like I've been neglecting the newsletter. 🥹 There's been a number of personal things going on, our work at the SGA has been quite hectic (with some cool new partnerships I

Tencent's renewables, Steam controller repairs, and future electro-tech – GTG Links 74

Welcome back – it's been a whole month since we've checked in on games industry ESG reporting, and well it's been quiet, so it's a short one. We can expect a lot more news next month-or-so as the big Tech companies

A Fireside Chat from GDC 2047

[Our Scene: It's the main stage of GDC 2047, still being held at the recently renovated and flood-barrier-protected Moscone Convention Center! The room is almost but not quite full of game developers, mostly in the perpetual uniform of the Gamedev: jeans, muted t-shirts and hoodies,

3 new ESG reports + green storytelling + an El Niño "wave train" – GTG Links 73

Welcome back – it's been a hot minute, in some sense quite literally. It's May (typically an autumnal month here in Melbourne), and yet I'm sweating through 26 degrees. In the northern hemisphere, temperature records have also been smashed. It's been a spooky

Which Steam games caused the most download emissions in 2025?

Two things can be true simultaneously: 1) Digital downloads are by far better for the environment than the physical media alternative; shipping discs, cartridges, and plastic cases around the world, and 2) Downloading games still involves the release of some greenhouse gas emissions, until such a time as data centre

ESG Season kicks off with a CDProjektRED sized bang + AI impacts & standards + some good news – GTG Links 72

Welcome back to another links digest. We're kicking this one off with a look at the first game ESG reporter of the year, before we dive into (what else!) more AI and data centre second order impacts, a new AI environmental impact standard (that looks great imo), and

What does the price of oil mean for games + sustainability?

I had a very productive time in Europe, catching up with my SGA colleagues Maria & Jiri, and also meeting some local Berlin game developers. I got to meet the developers behind one of my favourite games of the last few years – Cold War political simulator Suzerain – and got to

Tour of European Renewables, Energy Saving Plugins & Ramaggedon – GTG Links 71

We've been travelling in Europe for the past few (rainy) weeks, and I wanted to share some of the hopeful sights of renewable generation that I spotted, just incidentally from trains. We start with some French wind farms – which was quite a big park, and though I didn&

Predictions for 2026 Games Sustainability Trends

Maybe its getting older. Maybe it’s the pace and intensity of the modern always connected life, or perhaps its the genuinely pretty dire state of the hope to keep global warming “well below 2ºC” and stave off the worst of sea level rise, droughts, floods, and storms of an

Business Sustainability Standard Support, Cross-Border Carbon, and CO2 Mortality – GTG Links 70

One month into 2026 and it's already another eventful year. Sending my solidarity to any and all readers protesting ICE goons in the US. This week's newsletter is heavy on the business side of things, but ends with some super interesting research on mortality rates associated

Did PC gaming emissions grow in 2025 – and is Nvidia to blame?

One of my most-read GTG pieces of 2025 was hot out the gates – published in the very first week of January. In it, I asked “What is going on with Nvidia GPUs and PC gaming emissions” and I looked at the eye-watering power consumption of Nvidia’s most

New Year, New Climate – GTG Links 69

Welcome back to a new year – though we might be hard pressed to describe it as happy new year right at the minute, with a global political backdrop that is less than ideal and greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere reaching their highest concentrations ever. ICYMI - the latest monthly status on

How does a major content release affect sustainability?

Hey before we get into this week's post – remember the game industry Net Zero Snapshot I last did way back in 2023? Well, members of the Sustainable Games Alliance woke up this week to an early Christmas present! Dropping right into their inboxes is the new and improved

Books, Budgets, Batteries, and Bitcoin – GTG Links 68

Welcome back to Greening the Games Industry. It's December already, and the year-end is almost upon us. As everyone tries to wrap things up for the year, there's less news on the games industry front, but plenty from the wider world that has a bearing

How big a problem are PC gaming emissions?

One of the assumptions I have seen over the past couple of years is that “PC gaming emissions are so much higher than console” – which has not been helped, I think, by the eye-watering power consumption of high-end Nvidia 5000 series GPUs, which I wrote about back in

Sustainability reporting from T2, EA, Paradox, Razer, Nvidia; PS5 energy saver mode explained; energy consumption of GDDR memory; and more! It's GTG Links 67

Hello GTG readers! Do you often think about how you belong to a slowly but surely expanding, slightly exclusive nexus of fans of both a liveable planet and the game industry? I do, and I think that makes you some of the best readers on this blue-green planet. It&

SGA Academic Meetup #2 + a quick Standard update + Renewable Rottnest Island

Hello folks! Welcome back from the slightly protracted silence, and I hope you'll forgive me for the outside-of-regular-schedule update today, but I wanted to share the following invitation to our latest meetup happening this week. The details are below, and you can register for the

The SGA Sustainable Games Standard is launching V1.0 next week 🤯

As I'm sure you can understand, I'm a little short on time right now! In lieu of a proper piece, here's a short summary of all the events we have lined up for next few weeks across two hemispheres and 5 countries. Get excited!

PlayStation player emissions down, BF6 optimisation benefits, AI & hardware news, & why games matter in a time of crisis – GTG Links 66

There's been a lot of news since the last links post, so this one turned out a bit longer than I anticipated. Let's get into it, no time to waste, this climate is not going to save itself! Anti-enshittification: a solution to the game industry&

How far we've come: 50+ games and sustainability researchers on a call, and where the world stands on 1.5ºC–2ºC targets

Hi folks, there sure is a lot going on, isn't there? This was going to be a links post, but I think there's enough as it is, so I'll save the rest for next time. I also wanted to take this week's

Game sustainability researchers meetup on Sept 11th

Hey folks, just a quick heads up this week that the SGA is hosting a meetup for game researchers working on or interested in sustainability topics. This Thursday, September 11 @ 11 am CEST / 10 am BST / 7 pm AEST: the SGA is hosting a meetup for games researchers with a