How Is the Gaming Industry Becoming More Sustainable

With climate change having a noticeable effect on the world around us, it has never been so clear that taking steps to avoid it advancing any further are necessary. This will require a collective effort, meaning that everyone needs to play their part. At an individual level, this can mean things like recycling, turning off electrical appliances whenever they’re not being used, and swapping the car for public transport more often. 

 Businesses have a role to play too. They must all find ways to reduce their consumption of materials and energy to limit their impact on the environment. Of course, some industries have a more obvious impact on the environment than others. For example, the aviation sector burns a lot of fuel to fly passengers around the world and energy firms often have to burn fossil fuels to keep our lights on at home. 

 But the steps that some other industries can take to protect the environment are not always so obvious. One such industry is gaming, a sector where most products are now digital. Despite this, there are still things that the gaming industry is doing to become more sustainable, with one eye on the future. 

 Hosting Events Online

By its very nature, gaming is competitive. It provides a way for players to challenge others in a safe but fun environment.

 In recent years, this has seen esports really take off. Esports events bring the best players in the world together to battle it out in tournaments similar to how professional sports leagues are structured. However, just like any other event, hosting an esports competition requires a lot of energy, space, and materials. But to combat this, the industry is adopting online formats for some of their tournaments. 

 This can be seen from the diverse schedule of poker tournaments that are organised by PokerStars. The vast majority of these, including the Sunday Billion and Hot Turbos, take place online through the company’s software. 

 Hosting these events online removes the need for all the players to travel, often from other parts of the world, to compete together, and therefore cancels any CO2 emissions from transport and reduces the environmental overheads of heating and lighting a large event space.

 Sustainable Merchandise

Gaming merchandise has been growing in popularity in recent years. This has been driven, in part, by the fact that gaming companies are diversifying their revenue streams in the era of the free-to-play model. 

 But, unfortunately, as cool as a T-shirt with a video game character on the front is, producing such items can leave size 12 footprints upon the climate. 

 There are solutions to this that don’t mean doing away with merchandise altogether. One of the biggest is to manufacture recycled or organic printed clothing products since this can save almost 2,500 litres of water per product and reduce energy consumption. 

 Digital Distribution

Another large use of resources in gaming is the production of physical discs and the packaging they come in. 

 In years gone by, this was the only way to buy games, but high-speed internet connections have changed this. Platforms like Steam and the Epic Games Store allow publishers to distribute their content digitally, removing the climate-change-inducing effects of producing millions of shiny plastic discs before flying and driving them to every video game store in the world. 

 Downloads aren’t completely carbon neutral as they require lots of networking infrastructure to be manufactured, installed, and operated, but this has a much lower environmental effect than the traditional physical video game distribution methods. 

 Energy-Efficient Hardware

Gamers are always looking to push the boundaries of graphics, physics, and size in their video games. But to do so requires more powerful hardware. 

 This demand for more number crunching means that gaming devices are often much more power-hungry than the underpowered laptop you use to send emails at work. 

 A power supply unit (PSU) in a gaming PC can easily draw more than 500W at its peak performance costing both money and the environment. But systems like Energy Star have pushed manufacturers to find more energy-efficient hardware. 

 This will continue over time as players vote with their wallets, choosing more sustainable PC components, even if this does cost a little bit extra at first.