The future is looking more and more bleak for the wildlife of the Arctic, especially the polar bears. These bears rely on the sea ice to hunt their favorite prey, seals, and this large male bear seen here, seems to be looking across the Arctic in disbelief as his world disappears beneath him.
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The DeanBeat: Will cloud gaming make climate change worse?

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 5 min

Sometimes I like to think about long-term problems. Since the Australian wildfires have put the issue of climate change my mind, I’m wondering whether our visions for great things in technology and gaming, such as cloud gaming or the Metaverse, will make the problem worse.

At the moment, cloud gaming is probably not producing enough pollution to be on anybody’s list of the top contributors to climate change. But if the dreams of cloud gaming companies come true, then we’ll need to start worrying about their contribution to the problem.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.