Hot Games: Towards a Holistic Assessment of the Planet Warming Emissions of Video Games based on 2024-2025 Data

Every time a person picks up a controller or taps a screen to play a video game, a chain of events begins that stretches far beyond the living room. Before a game ever reaches a player, it must be built by teams of developers working in offices around the world. Once the software is finished, it requires powerful machines to run, from dedicated game consoles to personal computers, each of which must be manufactured, shipped, and powered. Even the act of downloading a new title or streaming a game over the internet moves vast amounts of data through cables and servers, consuming electricity at every step. This entire sequence, from the initial idea to the final hour of play, leaves a footprint on the planet. Scientists and environmental groups have long tracked how much energy different industries use, but the video game sector has often been a shadowy figure in these calculations, with its total impact difficult to pin down. To understand the true cost of our digital pastimes, researchers must piece together data from many different sources, looking at the energy used to build the hardware, the power needed to run the software, and the carbon released when games are made and distributed.

A team of researchers from Uppsala University in Sweden, working with the Sustainable Games Alliance, has now taken a fresh look at this global picture. They set out to create a comprehensive estimate of the carbon emissions generated by the video game industry, using the most recent data available from 2024 and 2025. Their goal was not just to guess at a single number, but to build a detailed map that shows exactly where the emissions come from. By gathering public reports from game companies, sales figures for hardware, and data on how long people spend playing, they constructed a new assessment that updates earlier estimates from a few years ago. The result is a clearer, though still imperfect, view of the industry's environmental impact, revealing that the total annual emissions from making and playing video games amount to approximately 62.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. This figure represents the combined weight of the entire lifecycle of gaming, broken down into specific categories so that the industry can see which parts of the process are the heaviest polluters.

The researchers began by examining the creation of the games themselves. Before a single player logs in, significant energy is consumed in the development and publishing phases. This includes the electricity used by offices, the travel of employees, and the marketing efforts that bring a game to market. The team analyzed environmental reports from the largest game companies, as well as estimates for those that do not publish such data. They found that the work of building and selling games accounts for a substantial portion of the total, with reporting companies contributing over six million metric tons and non-reporting companies adding another two and a half million. This part of the calculation highlights that the effort to design and market a game is a major source of emissions, separate from the actual playing of the game.

Next, the study turned to the physical machines required to play. Every console, laptop, and monitor carries an "embodied" cost, which is the carbon emitted during its manufacturing and transport. The researchers looked at sales data for the most popular gaming devices, including the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series consoles, and the Nintendo Switch, as well as personal computers. They used known data from manufacturers like Dell to estimate the carbon footprint of a typical gaming laptop and desktop, then multiplied these figures by the number of units sold. They found that the production of gaming computers and their screens generates the largest share of manufacturing emissions, followed by consoles. Interestingly, the study deliberately left out mobile gaming on smartphones, noting that while people spend a great deal of time playing on phones, the manufacturing impact per device is far lower than for dedicated gaming hardware, and the data for this massive sector is too fragmented to include accurately in this specific calculation.

Once the hardware is in the home, the emissions continue through the distribution of the games. In the past, games were sold on physical discs or cartridges, but today most are downloaded digitally. The team calculated the energy required to transfer these massive files across the internet. They analyzed the total volume of data downloaded through major platforms like Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox, applying a standard measure for the energy needed to move one gigabyte of data. This digital distribution process, which includes downloading new games and installing updates, was found to generate a few million metric tons of emissions annually. The researchers noted that they did not include the emissions from shipping physical copies, as digital sales have become so dominant that the impact of physical distribution has become marginal in the grand scheme of things.

The largest single source of emissions, however, comes from the act of playing the games. This is the energy consumed by the devices while they are running, drawing power from the electrical grid to render graphics and process sound. The researchers estimated the total hours people spend playing on personal computers and consoles, then applied average power consumption figures for these devices. They found that the time spent playing on PCs alone generates nearly ten million metric tons of emissions each year. Sony provided data on the emissions from its own gaming devices, which the researchers used as a baseline, while they estimated the impact for Xbox by scaling down Sony's numbers based on sales volume. This use phase remains the most significant contributor to the industry's carbon footprint, dwarfing the emissions from development and manufacturing when viewed on an annual basis.

A growing part of the gaming landscape is cloud gaming, where the game runs on a powerful computer in a distant data center, and the video is streamed to the player's screen. This shifts the energy consumption from the player's home to the data center. The researchers estimated the emissions from this model by calculating the energy needed to render the game on the server and the energy required to stream the video to the user. They assumed a moderate amount of time spent playing these services and used data on the bandwidth required for high-quality streaming. Their analysis suggests that cloud gaming adds nearly seven million metric tons of emissions annually. While this method avoids the need for powerful hardware in the home, it relies heavily on the energy efficiency of the data centers and the carbon intensity of the electricity grid that powers them.

The study concludes by acknowledging the limitations of its own numbers. The researchers were forced to make several assumptions because companies often do not share detailed data about their emissions, sales figures, or energy usage. For instance, they had to estimate the power consumption of the Nintendo Switch because the company does not distinguish between handheld and docked play modes in its reports. They also noted that their total figure is significantly lower than some previous forecasts, largely because newer data suggests that the energy required to transmit data over the internet has become more efficient than earlier models predicted. The authors emphasize that their work is not a final verdict but a starting point, intended to spark better reporting and more precise measurements in the future. By breaking down the emissions into these specific categories, they hope to help the industry identify where the biggest impacts lie and where improvements can be made to reduce the overall environmental cost of the games we love.