Climate Action in the Video Game Industry

Abstract

Only recently, scholars have turned their attention to the environmental impact of the video game industry. While this research has uncovered and assessed the industry’s environmental impact, it is important to consider the corporate role in addressing it. Specifically, to properly allocate corporate responsibility and mobilize effective corporate action to reduce the environmental footprint of video games, regulators and stakeholders of the environment must understand how the video game industry responds to such an agenda, i.e., what strategies it employs in compliance, resistance, and avoidance.
This study contributes to such an understanding from perspectives of corporate environmental responsibility and corporate political activity by investigating not only the extent to which video game publishers address their GHG emissions, but also how they engage politically to influence regulation and avoid responsibility. Drawing on theories of sustainable business models, sustainable supply chain management, and corporate political activity, the study is an analysis of a number of mainly written sources, in particular company documents, such as annual reports and ESG reports.
The findings shown in this paper are that the companies reviewed are generally effortful in reducing scope 1 and 2 emissions, while showing limited effort towards addressing their scope 3. While the firms engage to various extents in supply chain management for sustainability in upstream activities, user-emissions from playing video games are rarely addressed. Furthermore, the companies mostly fail to acknowledge factors of game design and optimization in these emissions.
It is argued in this paper that the firms’ engagement with the Playing for the Planet Alliance and the Science-Based Targets initiative as well as the promotion of “green games” to raise climate change awareness and educate players in addressing their environmental footprint are examples of corporate political activity to avoid responsibility of use-phase emissions, mainly through self-regulation and promotion of consumer responsibility.
The findings have relevance for regulators and stakeholders of the environment seeking to mobilize and strengthen corporate action, e.g. through setting standards for game design, optimization or similar.
Further research is suggested to investigate such activities at a wider scope that include aspects, such as material use, and industry actors, such as hardware developers and video game distributors.