Update []: A new volunteer-led venture has been revealed that aims to preserve the legacy of the video game archive Myrient, which recently announced it would close.
"Myrient is shutting down," reads the landing page of the Minerva Archive, which is described as "a volunteer-driven effort to archive its entire collection before it goes offline."
The page continues:
"Myrient has been one of the most comprehensive game preservation resources on the internet. With its impending shutdown, millions of files — representing decades of gaming history — risk being lost permanently.
Minerva distributes the work across hundreds of volunteers worldwide. Each worker downloads files from Myrient and uploads them to our archival servers. The site is rate-limited, so we need as many hands as possible.
Run a script, share your bandwidth, help preserve the archive."
If you'd like to help, head over here.
Original Story []: Myrient, a self-described "video game preservation service" which houses over 390 terabytes of "organised collections publicly available for download", is closing down on March 26th, it has been announced.
Aimed at retro gamers and emulation fans, Myrient's USP is that it offers fast download speeds and properly curated ROM collections – and it doesn't rely on advertisements to pay its server fees.
However, a combination of insufficient funds, the use of paywalled download managers by certain users, and the rising cost of PC hardware, such as RAM and SSDs, has forced the site to close its doors.
Myrient webmaster even revealed that the monthly cost of running the site was leaving him over $6000 out of pocket each month.
The irony of blaming AI – a technology that is famously built on the widescale theft of human-made content – for the closure won't be lost on those who take a dim view of ROM-sharing websites, but there's a solid argument that Myrient is doing an important job for video game preservation.
While its many collections will have hosting titles which are legally available on modern-day systems or via platforms like Evercade and Polymega, sites like Myrient play an important role in the realm of preservation due to the fact that many IP holders no longer exist, and their games would be at risk of being lost forever were it not for ROM-sharing portals.
Many titles are also unlikely to be re-released due to the expiration of decades-old licensing deals.
Did you use Myrient to build out your ROM collection? How do you feel about the site's closure? Let us know with a comment below.