First steps towards reducing a studio’s environmental impact
The video game industry, like the digital sector as a whole, faces a major challenge: balancing innovation, performance and environmental responsibility.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), by 2025 the digital sector will account for around 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions — more than civil aviation. And this share could double by 2030 if no structural action is taken.
The impact of the digital sector is therefore very real. For a studio, this means integrating a coherent environmental strategy at every level of its operations
At JYROS, we have established an environmental charter to address these challenges. In this article, we invite you to take a first step towards more responsible practices by signing this charter and share it with your teams.
Why sign the charter?
Signing this environmental charter primarily allows you to formalise and structure your actions for your studio’s ecological transition.
For managers, it is a practical tool that helps to organise initiatives and initiate discussions with teams. It also enables these issues to be integrated into the core of the business plan and the company’s overall strategy.
Note : Financial support such as subsidised impact loans is available, offering reduced interest rates if your company’s CSR objectives are validated.
Concrete and transformative commitments
By signing this environmental charter, you are making a firm commitment and contributing, in your own way, to the sector’s ecological transition.
These commitments cover several key areas:
Buildings and energy
The management of premises is one of the primary areas for action. Studios use high-performance computer workstations, which are often energy-intensive, in addition to lighting, network equipment and air conditioning. Taken individually, their impact may seem limited, but it becomes significant over a full year.
Travel
International trade shows, meetings with publishers, press events and festivals punctuate the life of studios. Added to this are employees’ daily commutes. All this travel often accounts for a significant portion of a studio’s carbon footprint.
IT equipment
At the heart of production, IT equipment (workstations, servers, specialised peripherals) is essential. However, the majority of its environmental impact stems from its manufacture, far more so than from its use.
Responsible procurement
Beyond IT equipment, a studio makes numerous purchases: furniture, services, marketing materials or consumables. This indirect footprint is often underestimated. Integrating environmental criteria into procurement processes and the selection of suppliers is therefore essential.
Eco-design
This is undoubtedly the most strategic challenge. Designing a more resource-efficient game does not mean sacrificing quality or creativity. It involves optimising the code, limiting unnecessary calculations, reducing the resources required, and anticipating the impact of updates and server infrastructure.
Distribution and digital infrastructure
Digital distribution is often perceived as environmentally friendly. However, the data centres and network infrastructure required to download and host games consume a great deal of energy. It is therefore crucial to analyse the impact of frequent updates, large files and server architectures
Towards a sustainable corporate culture
Beyond technical measures, the challenge is also cultural.
Reducing a studio’s environmental impact cannot rest on a single person or a mere token commitment. It requires management involvement, raising awareness among teams, and integrating environmental indicators into the overall strategy.
Establishing clear governance, communicating transparently on progress made and avoiding any form of greenwashing are essential conditions for lending credibility to the initiative.
The aim is not to be perfect straight away, but to set the company on a path of continuous improvement.
Further reading
Understanding these issues is an essential first step towards realising the efforts required. The next question is often: how do we actually take action?
To help you with this, we have created the video game eco-guide. This guide is entirely dedicated to improving studios’ environmental practices. It is based on concrete studies, provides statistical data and links to useful tools, resources and plug-ins.
Designed as an interactive experience, it is both fun and easy to implement.
The Video Game Eco-Guide is available now on the JYROS website.
Further reading
To track your overall carbon footprint and the effectiveness of your actions, you can also use the JYROS platform to assess your carbon footprint, identify your main emission sources and prioritise your key actions in just a few hours.
