Sustainable Games Standard (SGA Standard): Sustainability framework for the video games industry

Background

The games industry spans game development, cloud infrastructure, digital distribution, online services, hardware, and end-user devices, creating environmental impacts that differ significantly from those of traditional manufacturing sectors. While many game companies already publish sustainability reports, approaches to measuring emissions—particularly Scope 3 emissions—have often varied between organizations.

The Sustainable Games Standard was developed to address this challenge by providing a common framework specifically designed for games. It is maintained by the Sustainable Games Alliance, a member-governed non-profit cooperative of game companies, trade associations, researchers, and sustainability experts. The standard is intended to evolve over time through industry collaboration and scientific review.

Unlike generic carbon accounting guidance, the framework includes methodologies tailored to activities such as game installs and updates, cloud and data centre usage, end-user device energy consumption, online services, digital advertising, and other value-chain activities specific to the games industry.

Key Provisions

The Sustainable Games Standard provides detailed methodologies and data templates for measuring greenhouse gas emissions across activities that are specific to the video games industry. Published components currently include, among others:

• Scope 1 and 2 emissions – Methodologies for calculating emissions from office buildings, purchased electricity, and heating using utility data and other operational information.

• Data centre emissions – Guidance for measuring cloud computing emissions using cloud providers' carbon calculators or spend-based estimation methods where detailed data is unavailable.

• IT hardware – Methods for quantifying embodied emissions from computers and other equipment using supplier life-cycle assessment (LCA) data or spend-based estimates.

• Game installs and updates – Methodologies that estimate emissions associated with downloading games and software updates from digital distribution platforms, using download size, regional electricity factors, and platform data where available.

• End-user energy consumption – Dedicated methodologies for mobile, console, and PC games that estimate or measure the electricity consumed while players use a game. Depending on data availability, organizations can use direct telemetry, player-duration data, hardware profiles, or simplified estimation methods.

Most components are offered in Basic, Enhanced, Optimized, and Automate versions, allowing organizations to progress from simple estimates to highly accurate, software-integrated measurements as more data becomes available.

Current Status

The Sustainable Games Standard was publicly launched in October 2025 as the first sustainability reporting framework developed specifically for the global games industry. Since its launch, the Sustainable Games Alliance has continued developing the Standard by releasing additional sector-specific components, methodological specifications, data input templates, and implementation guidance. As a living standard, it is updated iteratively as new methodologies are reviewed and approved, in collaboration with the EU-funded Horizon Europe project STRATEGIES (Sustainable Transition for Europe's Game Industries).

Resources

• https://sustainablegamesalliance.org/standard/

• https://sustainablegamesalliance.org/standard/development-of-the-standard/

• https://sustainablegamesalliance.org/standard/guide-to-the-esrs-reporting-for-games-businesses/