Surprise Digital Downloads Have Bigger Carbon Footprint Than Most Discs

[burninmylight]

mjk45 said:

burninmylight said:

VanceIX said:
Did they take into account the gas needed just to get to GameStop to pick up the game, or the extra energy needed to power the disc drive?

Not that I really care, tbh. Really anything will affect the environment in some way, its not like you're dumping sludge into rivers >_>

Or all the fuel used to ship the games across the oceans and/or country, and waste produced from the boxes and cases to store them in, along with manuals and advertisements (and the resources needed for said boxes, cases and paper). So many factors left out. I don't see how this study can be considered valid.

Exactly , we don't know what parameters these researchers used  did they go all the way back down the production line to find out the actual foot print and go forward to disposal and on the other side did they just calculate just the cost of download or did they include server cost and there are unknowns like what % of people for what ever reason download the same game more than once .

And what happens to those tens of millions of unsold, returned or resold games? I'm pretty sure they don't just poof and disappear. They either become waste, get stuck in storage hell, or get recycled and reused, which still costs money, energy and resources to execute.