The Myrient archive—a massive 385TB collection of retro games—won't shut down after all. A community of gamers managed to back up the entire thing before the March 31 deadline. Three things killed Myrient: skyrocketing hosting bills, hardware costs that kept climbing, and jerks who were stealing the games to resell them.
Archive Faced Imminent Closure
Myrient, recognized as one of the internet's most extensive repositories for classic video games, announced its impending closure on March 31. The creator said donations weren't cutting it—they were personally dropping over $6,000 a month just to keep the lights on. The archive's creator revealed they were personally subsidizing operations by over $6,000 each month, a financial burden deemed unsustainable.
RAM, SSDs, and hard drives all got expensive fast. The AI boom sucked up so much memory and storage that prices went nuts. AI data centers hoarded chips and drives, leaving everyone else short. For instance, German data center giant Hetzner recently confirmed price increases of up to 37%, effective April 1. Myrient also struggled to afford "necessary upgrades to the storage and caching infrastructure" it needed to continue operating.
But beyond financial pressures, the archive grappled with a significant problem: abusive users. These individuals exploited Myrient's resources for commercial gain. They bypassed the site's donation prompts and built-in download protections, even going so far as to erect paywalls for content freely available on Myrient. This practice directly violated the archive's policy against commercial use. "The use of Myrient for commercial, for-profit purposes has always been strictly forbidden," the creator stated. "Such egregious and abusive usage of the site cannot be tolerated anymore."
Community Mobilizes for Preservation
When word got out that Myrient was dying, gamers and archivists sprang into action. Forming the "Save Myrient" community, they embarked on a monumental task: backing up the entire 385-terabyte archive before its scheduled shutdown. This week, a mod from the SaveMyrient community, known on Reddit as Ill-Economist-5285, proudly announced the success of their efforts. "We can now announce that the Myrient mirror is now 100% COMPLETE!!" Ill-Economist-5285 wrote.
The team downloaded and checked every single file—no small feat with 385TB of data. Now they're working on torrents so more people can grab copies of the archive. Torrents are just a stopgap—they're building a proper website to host it all permanently.
The Discord and Telegram are still running, so fans can keep talking about preservation. That keeps the door open for someone with real money to revive the archive properly. The r/savemyrient subreddit also serves as a central hub for updates and community coordination.
The Broader Stakes of Digital Archiving
Myrient's near-death exposed a real problem: preserving old games is hard when the legal status is murky. For years, Myrient was the go-to place for verified ROM files—people trusted it to have clean copies of PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii U games. Its role was vital for ensuring access to gaming history.
The AI industry's hunger for chips and storage blindsided Myrient with costs it couldn't handle. It's a reminder that tech booms can wreck unrelated industries in unexpected ways. Some people joked that if Myrient had died, fans might've used AI to recreate the games instead—which is pretty ironic given that AI demand killed it in the first place.
Saving these games isn't just about nostalgia. It's about letting future generations see how games evolved. What happened with Myrient shows how serious gamers are about preserving their history—even when it costs money and takes real work.
The Save Myrient community continues to work on making the 385 terabytes of backed-up data widely available, with new torrents actively being generated and plans for a dedicated website underway.
