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SNES console and CRT TV — (Image credit: Shutterstock)

Myrient, one of the largest online video game archives, has announced that it will shut down on March 31, 2026. According to the archive’s official Telegram page, it’s closing the service due to insufficient funding, rising costs, and abusive download managers. The creator said that donations are not keeping pace with hosting costs, and that they are paying more than $6,000 out of pocket per month to cover expenses, which is hardly sustainable.

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Aside from that, RAM, SSD, and HDD prices have been steadily rising due to the AI infrastructure build-out, resulting in higher hosting expenses for Myrient as well. We’ve actually seen this with German data center giant Hetzner, which is hiking prices up to 37% starting April 1. The archiving site said it needed “necessary upgrades to the storage and caching infrastructure,” which it cannot afford due to memory chip and storage shortages.

The creator also complained about abusive users who were monetizing Myrient content. Not only did they bypass the donation messages and the site's built-in download protections, but they also added a paywall that defeated the site’s policy against paywalls.

They said, “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.”

Because of this, anyone interested only has until the end of March to download everything stored on the site. You’d need a ton of storage and a fairly fast connection if you want to do this, though, since the website itself estimates it has at least 390TB of data. What made it one of the largest repositories of classic games was that anyone was free to upload content the website needed, meaning Myrient could list a game it needed to copy for safekeeping. Millions of gamers worldwide could pitch in and submit a copy of their legally purchased title.

Fortunately, the site’s Discord server and Telegram channel will remain accessible, so there’s still a place for gamers and preservationists to come together to discuss saving their favorite titles. It also gives us hope that this archive will be revived in the near future, but the massive amount of information it holds means it will need to be funded by someone with deep pockets.

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Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.

7 Comments Comment from the forums

usertests

If you only care about some of the older systems, you can likely get everything ever made for some of them at well under a terabyte.

A month's notice is good. It's likely to all be preserved, since doing so costs less than hosting.
Reply
Cyber_Akuma

Very misleading article. Mind you, I hate how AI has driven up prices and is turning everything into crap, but that was not the main reason for the shutdown.

The shutdown notice said:

I have decided to shut down Myrient on 31 March 2026. Until then, the site will continue to remain available in its current state. Please download any content you find important, as you have around one month to do so.
There are several reasons for the closure:

Insufficient fundingAs 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.

Paywalled download managersIn the past several months, many specialized download managers were created that completely bypassed the site, donation messages, and download protections. Some of these download managers locked certain features behind a paywall that required users to pay in order to gain access. 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.

Rising RAM, SSD, and HDD pricesSince last September, RAM, SSD, and HDD prices have surged dramatically and continue to rise due to the ongoing extreme demand for Al datacenters. This has caused Myrient's hosting expenses to go up as well. Necessary upgrades to the storage and caching infrastructure only exacerbated the problem. With a large number of servers and the aforementioned existing monthly deficit in excess of $6000 out of pocket, there is no way to pay for the increased hosting and hardware upgrade costs.

There are still many other smaller reasons, I could go on and on about them, but nobody would want to read it.

Funding the service which cost $6000 a month is the biggest issue, this was not helped when people created download managers specifically designed to leech large amounts from the site and bypass it's download restrictions and all messages about donating.

The rising price of storage due to AI was a small part of the shutdown, lack of funding due to nobody donating and people creating apps designed to leech the site... and charge for doing so, were the biggest reasons.

This article is very misleading in that it tries to make it sound like AI was the driving factor if not the sole reason for the shutdown.

usertests said:
If you only care about some of the older systems, you can likely get everything ever made for some of them at well under a terabyte.

A month's notice is good. It's likely to all be preserved, since doing so costs less than hosting.

The site didn't just carry the games themselves, it carried a lot of data related to games that is hard to find if not exclusive to it. Some DLCs and promotional themes that were not archived elsewhere, supplementary materials, leaks, etc. All very well organized and vetted as well. Many have described it as the Library of Alexandria for older game content.
Reply
sydneybrokeit

The site is not $6000 a month. That is what the admin is paying *out of pocket*. Traffic went up last year, driving part of the increase, but given that many vendors are charging non-trivial amounts more for hosting due to the AI shortage. There is a very real chance that those increased prices from AI are driving it from "a little out of pocket" to "all of some peoples' salary".
Reply
Pierce2623

Noooi!! Myrient is so much better than the archive.com alternatives on the ROMs megathread. Myrient was the standard on systems PS2/Gamecube and everything below. Anybody into emulation knows what I mean. The downloads are faster and can be done more than one at a time compared to other free sites. This really sucks for people that like to emulate older stuff.
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Dntknwitall

AI destroying more of the gamer domain. It won't be long before gaming is mostly destroyed by this garbage that shouldn't even exist. Have fun playing on the cloud because companies are going bankrupt trying to supply gamers with the entertainment we all enjoy.
Reply
beyondlogic

there wont be a market left at the way this ai nonsense keeps destroying.
Reply
roxy_

Admin said:
Myrient, which hosts more than 390TB of preserved video games, is set to go offline at the end of March 2026 due to rising storage and memory costs. The founder says they're spending more than $6,000 out of pocket per month to keep the project going.

390TB video game archive being taken offline due to skyrocketing RAM, SSD, and hard drive prices — AI-driven supply squeeze results in closure of o... : Read more
That's just mental. AI is great, but I really hope it will backfire even if it wasn't the main cause for this, the prices of PC specs rising is too much already. MYRIENT WAS MY GO TO. I SHED A TEAR WHEN I GOT THE NOTIFICATION ON DISCORD OF IT SHUTTING DOWN.
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390TB video game archive being taken offline due to skyrocketing RAM, SSD, and hard drive prices — AI-driven supply squeeze results in closure of one of the largest online video game archives

390TB video game archive being taken offline due to skyrocketing RAM, SSD, and hard drive prices — AI-driven supply squeeze results in closure of one of the largest online video game archives

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