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Why Reefs and Rainforests?
Each year, the Green Game Jam challenges studios to engage their players on a key environmental theme and work towards a collective goal. This year’s theme was ‘Reefs and Rainforests,’ as voted by our Green Game Jam and wider Playing for the Planet community.
These two unique ecosystems are teeming with biodiversity and essential to life on earth. Protecting our rainforests is an essential step in climate action because in addition to cooling and regulating the planet’s weather systems, they store carbon from the atmosphere. Coral reefs, meanwhile, are the cornerstone of aquatic food chains and defend coastal regions from storms and flooding.
The collective goal this year was fundraising. Studios were asked to pick one: either ‘Team Reef’ or ‘Team Rainforest. Each team was advised to direct their fundraising efforts towards two impact partners for 2026, Rainforest Alliance and Oceana.
These organisations were chosen because of their strong focus on mitigation, advocacy and community-led strategies. Forest Allies, the supported initiative of the Rainforest Alliance, works with local communities to support the responsible management of tropical forests by targeting the economic structures behind deforestation. Whilst Oceana works with coastal communities and local governments to ensure protections for coral reefs and the people whose livelihoods depend on them.
What fundraising impact did The Green Game Jam 2026 have?
The total amount raised was $287,000. 63% of this total went to Rainforest Alliance, and 22% went to Oceana. The remaining 14% went to other conservation organisations: German-based We Do OCEAN e.V, as well as a number of sea and rainforest projects via environmental rewards platform Dots.Eco.
Donations will support the following activities at Rainforest Alliance:
Fundraising for Oceana was tied into their Ocean Action Month campaign, when collective action advances Oceana’s campaigns and policies that protect coral reefs. Donations were allocated towards the following campaigns:
Thanks to the contribution of studios in the Green Game Jam, 89% of Oceana’s campaign milestones are either on track or achieved.
What kind of engagement did we see?
Beyond fundraising, this year’s Green Game Jam saw the second-highest number of engaged daily users ever at 180 million. Activations saw a 57%* average engagement rate and 39%** completion rate where activations were played from start to end.
Some studios also reported an increase in the length of playtime sessions, a higher number of daily logins, and players reporting that they were directly motivated to play more because of the charity aspect of the activations.
In particular, Lords Mobile and Seekers Notes used their social media platforms alongside their in-game campaigns to evolve a conversation about climate action. Seekers Notes collected examples of how individual players took action in their day-to-day lives, sharing these stories back to the wider community. Meanwhile, Lords Mobile invited players to submit examples of their day-to-day climate action as part of a social media competition, receiving over 1,000 submissions and generating over 100,000 organic discussions about rainforest conservation. In comments, some players requested more charity-based activations and suggested different options that the studio could pursue. They also mentioned that they had started to look out for the Rainforest Alliance frog certification label, reflecting strong awareness and recall.
Finally, we saw our highest-ever participation rate in our Player’s Choice Award. Over 600,000 unique users voted for their favourite game to win this year, speaking to those strong engagement figures we saw and suggesting that players can be mobilised with the right prompting.
What did we learn?
Studios went into the 2026 Green Game Jam with the goal of building activations inspired by coral reefs or rainforests that raised funds for the chosen ecosystem through player engagement. Not only did we meet this goal, we gathered two important learnings that will help us iterate in 2027.
Firstly, we found that players can be directly motivated by environmental content in games. Lots of studios reported higher than average engagement, increased lengths of playtime sessions, higher than average daily logins and strong conversion rates through store platforms. Whilst this could be attributed to players getting excited about the game offering something different, player surveys and feedback on social media suggested players were specifically energised by the reef or rainforest cause.
Secondly, we found that many players already take action for the planet in their day to day life – and more importantly, are willing to share what they do. Seeing someone you identify with or someone who is part of your community perform a pro-environmental action can be a very strong predictor of whether or not you will perform the action yourself. Since player communities can be extremely tight-knit and attract similar demographics of people, we’ve identified an opportunity to prompt real-world action in players by making visible what other players are already doing.
The 2026 Green Game Jam saw the highest number of games participate in the project’s history, bringing a message of conservation to millions of players all over the world. Though fundraising efforts can be difficult in the current economic climate – one felt by players and studios alike – this year’s Jam still made a positive contribution to Rainforest Alliance and Oceana projects. At the same time, the 2026 Green Game Jam has given us a jumping off point to explore the community aspects of games that can transmit and normalise pro-environmental behaviours, a topic we plan to return to in 2027.
* Engagement rate based on data from 31 participating games
** Completion rate based on data from 34 participating games
