"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."
"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."
Myrient, founded in October 2022, provided free access to organized retro video game collections without ads, paywalls, or login requirements. The site accumulated over 390 terabytes of content supported by voluntary donations. Rising costs for RAM, SSDs, and HDDs—driven by AI data center demand—increased monthly operating expenses to $6,000, which the founder Alexey covered personally. Despite increased traffic, donations remained flat, making the situation financially unsustainable. Additionally, specialized download managers exploited the site's anti-limit policy for commercial purposes. The site will remain operational until March 31, 2026, with uploads halted as of February 26, allowing users time to download important content.
#video-game-preservation #server-infrastructure-costs #ai-hardware-demand #digital-archiving #retro-gaming
Read at Kotaku
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