Ahead of Myrient's RAM crisis-linked demise, volunteers are working to archive its entire collection

"Preserving Myrient's legacy, one file at a time" is the Minerva project's goal

Earlier this week, the operator of ROM distribution site and self-described "video game preservation service" Myrient announced plans to shut it down as of the end of this month. They advised folks to download any files from the collection that said folks were keen to hold onto ahead of the closure. A group of volunteers have decided to take that to another level, working together to archive all of Myrient's files so they can be preserved for posterity.

The band of volunteers have dubbed their project Minerva. "Myrient has been one of the most comprehensive game preservation resources on the internet," they wrote of their mission. "With its impending shutdown, millions of files representing decades of gaming history risk being lost permanently.

"Minerva distributes the work across hundreds of volunteers worldwide. Each worker downloads files from Myrient and uploads them to our archival servers. The site is rate-limited, so we need as many hands as possible."

Minerva's website includes a live tracker indicating the group's progress, while a dedicated Discord server is being used to co-ordinate their efforts. As of writing, the volunteers are cited as having archived 208,200 of a target 2.8 million files, meaning they're 7.3% of the way to the goal they hope to hit by Myrient's shutdown date of March 31st.

Myrient's operator, who goes by Alexey, cited a lack of funding in their reasons for shutting down. They added that a rise in the site's hosting expenses fuelled by the ongoing AI datacenter-driven hike in RAM, SSD, and HDD prices that we've dubbed RAMnarök had also contributed. "Necessary upgrades to the storage and caching infrastructure only exacerbated the problem," they wrote. "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."

A recent rise in "specialized download managers" which bypass Myrient and its donation messages, plus "many other smaller reasons" as having contributed to the demise of Myrient, which has been around since 2022.