Retro game archive with 390 TB worth of data is shutting down in March

[Redaktion]

A popular game archive service with around 390 TB of data, Myrient, will be closing its metaphorical doors later next month. Citing rapidly rising infrastructure costs, abusive usage, and lack of increase in donations, the service's founder has deemed it unsustainable.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Retro-game-archive-with-390-TB-worth-of-data-is-shutting-down-in-March.1238159.0.html

[A moment of silence]

Unfortunate, Myrient was a legendary place for preservation with no ads and fast download speeds.

It will be missed.

[nah]

To add to the earlier comment, Myrient is/was amazing indeed but eventually suffered from increased heavy use and people getting greedy with it. One of those situations that if you give people an inch, they take a mile. I know on their Discord they say financing and abuse are factors, but it wouldn't surprise me if the bulk of it is has to do with donations being poor. Really hard to expect the crowd that would use that site to actually contribute financially.

Oh well, shame that it'll be gone. Hopefully the people that needlessly hoarded what they could have the decency to share it back.

[Doom963]

And this is why we have backup plans.

[Blame game]

...it wouldn't surprise me if the bulk of it is has to do with donations being poor. Really hard to expect the crowd that would use that site to actually contribute financially.

That's certainly a take. Several studies have shown that the low income individuals are more likely to donate a higher % of their income than the wealthy as they're driven by personal experience of hardship so they can emphasize more and be more compassionate to those in need.

Ofcourse, in this economy where people are getting laid off left, right and centre due to AI that might not mean much. In which case, I would say the rich need to step up more. Or since they essentially own everything, they could maybe you know just release games that are 15+ years old for free and open source at this point. They're not gonna get anymore money from them unless it's IP like console sports games or Nintendo mario games or cod. Those customers just like getting milked.

Also, just because you're "rich" does not guarantee you're going to give back a thing. You've AI companies with revenue and profits the size of continents scraping the web for content and data for their LLMs to train on while not obeying/respecting copyright law at all and paying the necessary licensing fees or royalties.

Then they sell products and subscriptions back to the public for public despite never having payed anything themselves so I'd argue that the greed gets worse at the upper echelons of society.

[opckieran]

...it wouldn't surprise me if the bulk of it is has to do with donations being poor. Really hard to expect the crowd that would use that site to actually contribute financially.

That's certainly a take. Several studies have shown that the low income individuals are more likely to donate a higher % of their income than the wealthy as they're driven by personal experience of hardship so they can emphasize more and be more compassionate to those in need.

Neither % nor "compassion" are forms of currency. So it doesn't actually matter.