I don’t think I’ve ever shed tears for a website that’s going offline before, but it was pretty emotional for me. As a lover of retro games, playing these older masterpieces is going to be a bit harder, and with a lot more friction.
Tomorrow is the last day Myrient will be online.
Myrient was a one-man show. I’m absolutely amazed what Alexey has built over the past few years. Every single archival project was there, whether it was the venerable No-Intro, or Redump, or even the giant TOSEC. Alexey has cited various reasons for the closure of Myrient, but it was clear that the running costs were significant, around 6000$ per month. Of course, donations weren’t enough and I don’t doubt that Alexey was burnt out as well.
This was such an important resource for me, because it was integral to building TopRoms. It was the only reliable way for me to get clean ROMs for the collection. Before that, I had to settle with outdated sets on the Internet Archive. I actually had plans to release a major upgrade to TopRoms in May, but it’s likely it won’t happen until the end of the year.
Keep an eye on /r/savemyrient/, as a few dedicated members of the community are trying to bring back some of the magic of Myrient in some form or another. MiNERVA is the most promising project, but good things take time. Until then, many of us will feel a massive gap within.
It’s really a sad day for the game preservation community. As we continue to fight major game companies who, for some reason, want to erase their own history and abandon the culture that made gaming a legitimate form of entertainment.
My only plea is to support these projects as much as you can. Whether it’s seeding torrent collections, or deploying your own seedbox, giving donations to these projects, or at least showing some gratitude and patience to those who do all these massive undertakings on their free-time with no pecuniary interests whatsoever.
R.I.P. Myrient. We’re going to miss you!