Europe’s game industries represent a vital cultural and creative sector with over 4,900 video game studios employing 98,000 people (€23.3 billion revenue) and a growing board game sector ($4 billion). With 52% of Europeans aged 6-64 playing video games, the sector's cultural reach is enormous. Initial project findings suggest game development contributes up to 50 million tonnes of CO2 annually (substantially higher than previously estimated) making urgent climate action essential.This urgency is compounded by the 2025 Omnibus package weakening the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which raised reporting thresholds and removed 80% of companies from mandatory requirements. With regulatory frameworks retreating, industry-led initiatives and practical support become critical. The challenge is acute for small and micro enterprises (over 90% of developers), which lack resources to assess impacts. Yet these companies are innovation leaders. STRATEGIES addresses this by supporting the game industries’ climate transition while leveraging their potential as drivers of societal change.
Strategic Objectives
Evidence: Gathering comprehensive data on working conditions, business infrastructure, skills, attitudes, and environmental impacts through quantitative and qualitative data collection and GHG emissions accounting.
Policy and Business Model Innovation: Producing evidence-based business model recommendations and policy frameworks that embed sustainability in funding, employment, management, and governance.
Tools and Training: Developing and testing toolkits for environmentally conscious design, leveraging games for broader CCI climate transitions, and embedding sustainability in developer training.
The project synthesizes environmental science data collection and analysis, ethnographic fieldwork, eco-critical approaches from the humanities, and critical-creative methodologies, addressing both material impacts (emissions, resources) and cultural-political dimensions of Europe’s game industries.
