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If you're an old fogie like me, then you'll be aware of Digital Press.
One of the earliest sites to truly celebrate and catalogue gaming's history – both past and present – Digital Press was founded back in 1991 by Joe Santulli and Kevin Oleniacz, and, at one point, was a treasure trove of information regarding classic games – mostly funnelled through its forum, which went live a quarter of a century ago.
I've lost count of the number of times I've found an obscure bit of information on the Digital Press forum, be it advice on AV connections or secrets hidden within old video games. The forum has, over the years, come to my aid on multiple occasions – but sadly, it won't be doing that any longer, as the Digital Press forum has been erased from the internet by Santulli.
The news was broken by Digital Press webmaster Sean "Nz17" Robinson in a lengthy blog post, in which he explains that the deletion is due to the hosting costs of $42 per month.
"While Joseph "Joe" Santulli had written an e-mail to me during Thursday, April 2nd, 2026 about what was about to happen, I did not notice the message until about Friday, April 10th, 2026," says Robinson.
"This is thanks to worsening and continuing computer problems and health concerns which I have had during these past three years - and some even before then - limiting the frequency with which I have been able to read and respond to e-mail and to work including upon the Web servers and forum. Nonetheless, thanks to the sudden, abrupt discontinuation of message board hosting, all data after March 22nd was lost."
As Robinson explains:
"Joe had written to me during April 2nd stating his intention of destroying the forum's server to save $42 per month. He wished for me to be the first to know. Joe then assumed that I read the missive. He didn't wait for confirmation nor affirmation. Only after I began sending my messages in reaction to the server being offline did Joe send further communiques, seemingly as surprised as I was in my own regard.
Everything was already destroyed. All that was online-only was lost.
Whilst this is not the situation which most of us wished for, it is nonetheless the current situation. The forum was intentionally taken offline starting about Sunday, April 5th, 2026 by Joe Santulli. Joe has decided that the $1.40 per day for hosting the forum at the World Wide Web was too much of a financial toll. He told the Web host, Digital Ocean, to immediately alleviate him of this financial burden by destroying the virtual server during that time this April. Joe had been wanting to take the forum permanently offline for years going back to about 2010 thanks to hosting costs and technical difficulties piling up with the DPRR. However, it was thanks to calls from dedicated fans of the forum with its wealth of valuable information, the priceless community, the wonderful people, the traditions, the silliness, and the good times past and present, that a dedicated team of which I, Nz17, was proud to be a part, kept the forum online and active all of these years with Joe's generous acquiescence and cooperation."
Robinson says that "options are being investigated" for bringing the forum back, "whether continuing as an active online community with fresh threads and replies or at least as an archive of posts preserved on the Web somewhere, preferably mirrored across several sites."
However, that doesn't remedy the fact that we've lost over two decades of information in the blink of an eye – and serves as yet another reminder that the internet is a fragile, fleeting place.