Myrient, one of the most impressive gaming archives available for PC players, has announced that it will be shutting down. The nonprofit website hosts over 390 TBs of video game files, making it one of the internet’s largest sources of archived gaming data available to both industry historians and gamers on PC with legally owned copies of its games.
In the wake of the industry shifting largely toward digital downloads and subscription services, gamers have long debated the best methods of video game preservation. As digital storefronts become more stacked with new releases, distributors reserve the right to remove older titles from availability at any time. Like most fields rooted in technology, the game industry expands rapidly, and older titles are often left behind when they become unavailable on modern platforms. While remasters, remakes, and retro collections are valuable ways to keep these titles available to new or returning players, online archives play a major role in ensuring some of gaming’s rarest and most obscure works are not abandoned or forgotten as other games become available to purchase.
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Massive Online Archive Myrient Is Closing Its Doors at the End of March
Online video game preservation archive Myrient has announced that it will be shutting its doors on March 31, 2026. The enormous archive of data, which allows any user to upload copies of their legally owned video games, posted the news to its Telegram page, assuring fans that the website will continue to function until its closure at the end of the month. The site’s Discord and Telegram pages will remain functional, serving as a meeting ground for retro enthusiasts and digital archivists to organize their efforts to continue preserving games.
Myrient’s post lists a handful of reasons behind the closure, chief among them the cost of maintaining the website. Funding and donations have not increased at the same rate as the site’s traffic, and Myrient’s creator acknowledges that they have been paying $6000 a month out of pocket to make up the funds needed to keep the site running, something that they admit is not sustainable. The post specifically calls out the rising RAM, SSD, and HDD costs that can be directly attributed to increased use of AI in the computing world. The impact of the current RAM shortage on the games industry has been extremely significant, and it has increased the cost of hosting a website like Myrient. The site’s owner also mentions the recent increase in “specialized download managers” that lock certain site features behind unauthorized paywalls, something they strongly condemn as being “strictly forbidden.”
Myrient is only the latest casualty of the current AI boom happening in the tech space. With RAM prices shooting up at unreasonable rates, manufacturers and customers alike have struggled to adjust. Price increases on PC hardware and even game consoles will feel the most direct impact, but cases like this show that there is a ripple effect that permeates the entire gaming world, even ruining efforts to archive the history of the industry. Predatory practices and a lack of support only serve to compound the issue. The rush to adapt to new technology without assessing the risks involved can be devastatingly costly.
Studies have shown that PC players tend to play older titles more, with the platform often serving as a safe haven for retro games. Archives like Myrient are massively important, as they preserve titles that may not be deemed profitable or significant enough for major distributors to dedicate space to them. Video games are a labor of love, and each one of them deserves to be remembered and preserved for future fans to appreciate.
Source: Myrient on Telegram
