SEGA® Europe Announces Plans to Roll Out Fully Recyclable Packaging Across its PC Portfolio

Starting with Total War: ROME II – Enemy at the Gates Edition, following success with Football Manager 2020

SEGA® Europe has today announced that it will switch to fully recyclable packaging for all its physical PC products, starting with the imminent release of Creative Assembly’s™ Total War™: ROME II – Enemy at the Gates Edition, on 6 February 2020. This edition will feature the Total War: ROME II – Emperor Edition along with the Hannibal at the Gates and Empire Divided DLCs. The news follows on from the successful collaboration between SEGA Europe and Sports Interactive™ in November 2019, which saw the physical release of Football Manager™ 2020, launched in 100% recyclable packaging.

The move to a more sustainable and environmentally friendly model of PC game packaging stemmed from Sports Interactive and SEGA Europe’s desire to find a solution that would reduce their impact on the environment, utilising  alternatives to plastic packaging, thus reducing the amount of pollution caused by sending waste to landfill. The new replacement packaging would still need to look premium and maintain its shelf appeal while retaining a similar level of security and robustness, which is provided with plastic packaging. Through the work of SEGA Europe’s Head of Operations, Natalie Cooke, Senior Product Manager, Tim Breach, and Sports Interactive Studio Director, Miles Jacobson, and following extensive testing, sampling and feedback from global distribution and retail channels, 100% recyclable packaging became a reality for Football Manager 2020, paving the way for all of SEGA Europe’s physical PC products to follow suit.

The packaging consists of a box made from 100% recycled and recyclable cardboard, along with a 100% recycled and recyclable manual. All printing uses water and vegetable inks, apart from the disc, which is recyclable via specialists. The whole package is shrink wrapped in 100% recyclable low-density polyethylene (LDPE). While this approach does come at an extra cost to SEGA Europe, this is in part offset by cheaper distribution – lighter packaging means lower fuel costs, and cheaper destruction costs as the package can be fully recycled. To echo Miles Jacobson’s statement in September 2019 regarding Football Manager 2020, it’s “a price worth paying to help secure the planet’s future”. Rob Bartholomew, Total War’s Chief Product Officer agreed, saying: “We’re proud that Creative Assembly is able to collaborate with SEGA on this great initiative to help reduce plastic waste and be a part of this small step towards a greener industry.”

“This initiative underlines SEGA Europe’s commitment to reducing its plastic waste and its ongoing efforts to implement environmentally friendly business practices,” said Gary Dale, President/COO of SEGA Europe. “Our estimations with regards to Football Manager 2020 suggested we’d save up to 20 tonnes of plastic packaging for that title alone, so taking this step for the rest of our PC portfolio would see that saving rise exponentially. We’d like to reiterate Miles’ plea from September 2019 to the entertainment industries to investigate similar packaging solutions, across movies, games and music so we can collectively observe a drastic reduction in the production of plastic packaging and its associated waste and pollution, over the coming years.”

For complete details on the materials that are used to produce this fully recyclable packaging and a list of suppliers used to achieve it, read Miles Jacobson’s open letter on the Football Manager website, here: https://www.footballmanager.com/news/open-letter-miles-jacobson. For more information about Total War: ROME II – Enemy at the Gates Edition, the first Creative Assembly title to launch in this green alternative packaging, visit www.totalwar.com, and for more information about SEGA Europe, visit www.sega.co.uk.