The Day One Game Delivery Dilemma: How to Help Fighting Climate Change
Around 40 billion tons of CO2 are emitted around the world annually. It is estimated that the carbon footprint of all internet usage accounts for about 3.7% or 1.5bn tons of CO2 each year. And these emissions are predicted to double by 2025. The Internet’s emissions of 3.7% are now even surpassing the whole aviation sector, which is estimated at 2.8% of global carbon emissions. If the internet was a country, it would come in 6th place, in between Japan (1.1bn tons) and Russia (1.9bn tons).
It’s no secret that gamers hate waiting. Previously we discussed what strategies gamers, publishers and game stores use to enjoy a game at Launch Day. Most strategies involve avoidable preload routines and huge Day One patches. With ROCKITPLAY FastStart preloading games prior to release becomes redundant, saving data bandwidth and costs. But perhaps most importantly, by slashing redundant bandwidth, FastStart also significantly reduces the environmental impact of game delivery.
That may seem impossible, but we don’t think it is. ROCKITPLAY FastStart is game delivery technology that allows games to start almost instantly, reducing the need for large pre-loads on launch day. This also makes Day One patches redundant, saving significant bandwidth. Further, the technology reduces patch sizes by approximately 50% compared to standard, saving 50% of data traffic and costs. Additionally, ROCKITPLAY allows for the delivery of game builds in stages, or progressively. This effectively reduces about 75% to 90% of data delivery for try-before-you-buy or F2P games. Instead of delivering the full download at once, install just enough content for game tryouts. Continue playing? No need to restart or exit the game to proceed.
In an independent study, goetzpartners found that in 2022 on average 70% of game content is being played, while 30% is not even touched. This ratio is expected to change to 65% played and 35% unused by 2025. This opens additional potential to save costs and energy, by reducing unnecessary data transportation.
The gaming industry stands at a crossroads. We can either continue down the path of ever increasing power consumption and larger carbon footprints as games explode in size, or we can take a new path, innovating ways to make gaming more sustainable or at least eliminate redundant data delivery. ROCKITPLAY is the only universal aftermarket technology that can be used with any game and that doesn’t require any game code changes or developer support. It works at scale and can flip an entire library the size of Steam.