No child’s play: the carbon footprint of gaming

Having exploded well beyond custom PC builds and chunky consoles to become a constant companion on handhelds and the cloud, the gaming industry’s pervasive influence is not lost on the planet. Here, Greenly breaks down the ecological impact of the sector, and stacks it up against other pastimes of our era. Can the builders of increasingly immersive worlds come together to reduce their impact on the planet?

Be it Tetris, Candy Crush, Mario Kart or even the beloved Call of Duty, gaming has fast expanded over the past three decades to provide something for everyone. With the sector first moving from the arcade to the household, and then to the pocket on increasingly powerful smartphones, the mass of gamers hunched over levels on public transportation has an ecological cost.

Greenly, a specialist in carbon accounting for businesses, has been examining the environmental impact of this pastime, whose impact is fast expanding into new platforms (handhelds) and even activities (watching influencers play on YouTube or Twitch).

The platform wars

Despite the rise of mobile and cloud gaming, consoles continue to go strong, with the console market having expanded by 10% in 2023 alone. This engenders significant manufacturing and transportation emissions, with both consoles and physical copies alike needing a number of rare metals to be manufactured. According to the University of Cambridge, the manufacture and transportation of the PS4 emitted 8.9 million tCO2e from 2013 to 2019, a number likely to have risen for the PS5. For usage emissions, Microsoft estimates that a modern console emits 72 kg (0.072t) per year. Considering that 90 million next generation consoles (PS5 + Xbox Series X/S) were sold up to June 2024, their cumulative use emissions can be calculated at 6.48 million tonnes. 

Meanwhile, PC gaming continues to command a devoted following, staying strong in the face of mobile and console gaming. While it is hard to distinguish general PC use and time spent gaming, we do know that on average, PCs are used for two hours and 25 minutes a day, thus emitting 84 kg CO2e (0.084t) per year. Once the annual impact of manufacturing emissions are factored in, this footprint rises to 149 kg CO2e (0.149t). It may not sound like much, but extending this to the global player base (an estimated 1.86 billion) yields an annual footprint of 277.14 million tCO2e.

Both console and PC use engender further emissions through electricity use. For the United States, where electricity consumption was estimated at 3.9 TWh, this amounts to a further 2.6M tCO2e of emissions when the electricity use by TVs is factored in.

Lastly, mobile gaming has risen as one of the most accessible formats, as evidenced by the rise of apps such as Candy Crush or Angry Birds. With average smartphone gaming sessions lasting about 97 minutes per day, a single user would emit 20 kgCO2e (0.02 tCO2e) from mobile gaming, including manufacturing emissions which are amortised over the life of the device. Seemingly insignificant, this adds up to 58 million tonnes per year for the global player base (2.9 billion active players on mobile), slightly more than the annual carbon footprint of Greece. 

The rise of the handheld 

Handheld gaming is not entirely new – many readers still harbour fond memories of the Nintendo DS or the PlayStation Portable. But the industry has seen a major shift in the last ten years – not only have powerful handhelds such as the Nintendo Switch made AAA titles increasingly accessible, but a significant minority also play games on tablets, particularly titles such as Clash of Clans or Candy Crush.

Much like PCs, it is hard to fully distinguish between gaming and non gaming use for tablets. Nonetheless, Greenly estimates the carbon footprint of tablets at 73 kg CO2e per year (0.073t), including amortised emissions for manufacturing. This footprint, at about half of PCs, is due to their lower power load and shorter use sessions (41 minutes per day).

Handheld consoles such as the Nintendo Switch emerge as a surprisingly green alternative, emitting a mere 13.8 kg CO2e (0.014t) per year, despite slightly longer use sessions than tablets (56 minutes per day). Their manufacturing has usually proven less carbon intensive, aiding this baseline figure. The true impact in use will be slightly higher, with most consoles being docked to TVs and the associated emissions from the higher power draw.

The carbon footprint of the games

The carbon footprint of games primarily depends on two variables: the format of the game (physical versus digital), and the footprint of data transmission to and from servers.

In 2023, a number of top games, including EA Sports FC 24, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, settled quite consistently around 30% of physical copies sold. This accounts for the manufacturing of millions of discs and their packaging, with Greenly estimating that manufacturing and packaging a million discs alone would emit an estimated 312 tCO2e, before transport emissions are factored in. In contrast, downloading a million copies of a game worth 70 GB would emit 3 tCO2e. This does not include the impact of periodic updates delivered online, which would be the same for both physical and digital copies.

Irrespective of how the game is acquired, most modern games require a persistent Internet connection to make use of online features. In this regard, most games are not hugely data intensive, with most popular titles such as Fortnite (100 MB/h), World of Warcraft (250 MB/h) or League of Legends (50 MB/h) not proving overly data intensive – playing Fortnite for a thousand hours would only consume 97.7 GB, less than the disk space required for most high end games today, emitting 3.91 tCO2e. While this footprint is small, it becomes considerable when extrapolated over a huge player base – a million players playing Fortnite for a thousand hours would collectively emit 3.91 million tCO2e.

The impact of streaming

Most online pastimes, such as listening to music or browsing, are relatively passive in nature. However, gaming stands out as a double edged sword, with gamers going online not only to play, but also to watch walkthroughs and commentary. Gaming YouTubers such as Ninja (24 million YouTube subscribers) and even e-sports players for games such as EAFC or Call of Duty command a loyal YouTube following, with about half of millennials and Gen Z likely to stream gaming influencers. 

While the impact of e-sports is beyond the remit of this study, streaming on YouTube is not without its costs. Assuming that a viewer watches such streams for half an hour every day, Greenly estimates that they would emit 584 kg (0.58t) per year. Greenly estimates that an hour of YouTube streaming would emit 3.2 kg CO2e.

How to go green?

Environment focused messages have long been a favourite of role playing games such as Final Fantasy, whose recent remake focused on our overdependence on fossil fuels. Storytelling aside, what could the industry do to reduce its footprint?

First, Greenly calls on Sony and Nintendo to follow the example of competitors, with companies like Apple and Samsung offering trade-in services for products coming to the end of their lifespan. Beyond the possibility of responsible recycling, such products are often disassembled to manufacture refurbished devices.

A more comprehensive evaluation of transportation and production emissions would also help. Conducting lifecycle assessments would help greatly reduce such emissions, with the PlayStation 4’s transportation emissions alone coming to 89 kg, which has likely remained comparable for its successor. Meanwhile, game studios could explore more energy efficient settings for menus and waiting rooms. This echoes efforts by Epic, which allows Fortnite. players to save a combined 73 GWh per year, the equivalent of 42 tCO2e factoring in the global energy mix. This figure is slightly inflated by more carbon intensive electricity generation in some parts of the world: extending the US energy mix to the global player base reduces it to 31 tCO2e, whereas the French energy mix sees it drop further to 6 tCO2e. Despite seeming low, these savings are quite impactful when one accounts for how little time is spent in menus and in waiting rooms.

Individually, gamers can notably contribute by committing to digital copies to help reduce e-waste, and by avoiding accessories such as fancy sound systems, headsets or extra devices such as docking stations for controllers.

For Alexis Normand, CEO of Greenly, ‘Far from its beginnings as a niche pastime in the ’80s, the expansion of gaming platforms into increasingly portable formats has been one of the real success stories of the past generation, putting forth the best of human creativity and cooperation in multiplayer environments. We are convinced that the same commitment can be channelled into supporting the environment, and call on the gaming community to keep the real world in mind even as they stream. 

The study is accessible in full here.