We’re happy to share the new official Energy Saver extension for Defold! 
The extension helps games reduce unnecessary power consumption when the player is inactive, particularly useful on mobile, handheld, battery-powered devices, but also for reducing heat, fan noise and energy use on PCs, consoles and other devices.
It can automatically apply several power-saving measures after configurable periods of inactivity:
- reduce the game’s FPS
- dim the screen
- disable rendering entirely
As soon as the player becomes active again, the game can return to its normal state. Power-saving measures can also be temporarily disabled when needed, for example during cutscenes or other sequences where inactivity should not trigger them.
An important part of making this useful is a change coming with Defold 1.13.2: when a lower update frequency is set, the engine loop no longer busy-waits for the next frame. This means reducing FPS with sys.set_update_frequency() can actually reduce CPU activity and power consumption instead of simply waiting actively for the next frame.
This can be especially useful for games with idle screens/menus, turn-based games, pause states, or other such situations.
The extension was developed in collaboration with the Sustainable Games Alliance, which works with the games industry on practical approaches to improving energy efficiency and player experience. This lays a solid foundation for Defold being a sustainable game engine.
SGA has also published an Energy Efficiency Guide and works on power-saving practices such as reducing frame rates during inactivity, screen dimming and avoiding unnecessary rendering - you can read more about it here.
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