Myrient, a retro-focused video game preservation site with “over 390 terabytes of organized collections,” will be shutting down for good in roughly 30 days. Founded in October 2022 by a user simply known as Alexey, Myrient has remained ad-free, paywall-free, and login-free since it first emerged three years ago, relying on a small pool of donations to keep the site online.
So, what’s changed? You guessed it: The rising cost of RAM, SSD, and HDD, caused by the never-ending demand from unsustainable AI data centers, has greatly impacted Myrient’s operating costs to the point that Alexey is paying roughly $6,000 every month just to keep the servers online. That’s not the only cause, however, as Alexey announced on Myrient’s official Discord server that while operating costs have risen, donations have remained at the same level. “As traffic continued to increase last year, the amount of funding from donations remained the same. I have been paying more than $6000 out of pocket every month in order to cover the difference which is not sustainable.”
Alexey also stated that several new “specialised download managers,” which presumably does not include the supported download managers outlined on Myrient’s FAQ page, operate in a way that takes advantage of the site’s anti-download-limit policy. “In the past several months, many specialized download managers were created that completely bypassed the site, donation messages, and download protections…The use of Myrient for commercial, for-profit purposes has always been strictly forbidden. Such egregious and abusive usage of the site cannot be tolerated anymore.”
The Discord announcement specifically states that Myrient will remain online until 31 March 2026, but that no further content can be uploaded “as of 26 February.” Alexey also asked that users “please download any content [they] find important” in the time they have left, as any further donations made from now until Myrient’s closure will be solely put towards paying off the site’s monthly hosting costs.