Standard Development

The Standard is designed to meet both the legal and societal expectations, as well as the practical requirements of companies operating within the games industry. The member-governed, non-profit cooperative SGA develops and iteratively updates the Standard with input from its members, under the supervision of the SGA Board, Advisory Board, and its research and policy partners.

Goal

The SGA Standard is designed to help game companies comply with current and emerging sustainability regulations, reducing both risk and costs operating across multiple jurisdictions. It provides a structured, cost-effective, and proactive approach to sustainability compliance, including benchmarking, target setting and actionable, systemic emissions reduction.

Setting

The Standard Development process is founded on international and cross-sectoral collaboration, supported by an expanding global network of stakeholders committed to unlocking the potential of the games industry to lead in sustainability, with a particular focus on decarbonization.

Development Process

SGA develops and updates the Standard iteratively in components, enabling input from various stakeholders, particularly its members, reporting experts, and research partners.

For each open component, SGA invites feedback and surveys its members, allowing them to influence development not only by submitting input via email but also by actively participating in discussions on methodologies, data collection formats, boundaries, and other topics related to the Standard.

Once an additional component of the Standard is close to finalisation, the latest version of the documents are handed over to the WP3’s STRATEGIES team of experts in carbon accounting and public standard development for review.

After this review and adaptions SGA members have the opportunity to provide final feedback on new features before the component is adopted and made publicly available.

Each new version of the Standard must be approved by the SGA Board.

All published components of the Standard, including the methodological specifications for each component and the data input sheets, can be publicly viewed, downloaded, and applied.

Development status of each component

Scope 1 and Scope 2 component – published

Scope 3 component

How SGA is approaching Scope 3?

The SGA Scope 3 issues paper provides a high-level summary of the challenges and opportunities that come from measuring Scope 3 emissions. To ensure that the standard meets the multiple needs of the games industry and its stakeholders, we make sure to achieve consensus on best practices for each aspect of Scope 3 emissions, determine methodologies that are transparent and accurate, and which deliver clear and actionable guidance on where game developers can take action to reduce them.