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A huge retro gaming archive that looked set to disappear at the end of March has now been preserved, thanks to a large-scale community effort.

Myrient, one of the biggest repositories of retro video game files on the internet, announced earlier this year that it would shut down on March 31, 2026 due to rising operating costs. The site hosts hundreds of terabytes of ROMs, ISOs, and other game preservation files.

Now, members of the gaming community say they have successfully backed up the entire archive before the shutdown happens.

Community Backup Preserves Entire Myrient Library

According to a post shared on X by Pirat_Nation on March 12, the Myrient archive has been “100% backed up by the community”.

The archive reportedly contains more than 390 terabytes of organised video game data, including ROMs and disc images spanning decades of gaming history.

Multiple reports confirm that community members quickly coordinated after the shutdown announcement. The goal was simple but enormous in scale, download and mirror every file before the servers went offline.

As a result, the full dataset has now been preserved. Some sources place the final backup at roughly 385TB, reflecting the verified portion of the archive that was successfully mirrored and validated by volunteers.

What Myrient Is And Why It Matters For Retro Gaming

Myrient has long been a major resource for retro gaming enthusiasts and emulation communities. The site organised massive collections of game ROMs and disc images used for emulating classic systems.

These included titles from older consoles and computers, along with later systems such as PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Nintendo Wii U.

For preservationists, archives like Myrient play an important role in keeping gaming history accessible. Museums and research projects have increasingly highlighted video games as a significant part of modern culture, and losing large digital collections can mean losing parts of that history.

Why The Archive Was Shutting Down

Despite its importance to the preservation community, Myrient’s operators announced that they could no longer afford to keep the service running.

Reports indicate the archive cost roughly US$6,000 per month to host, largely due to the enormous storage requirements needed to maintain hundreds of terabytes of data.

The team behind the project also cited several other problems affecting the site. These included abusive download managers that bypassed donation requests, as well as commercial services using the archive despite its strict non-profit rules.

At the same time, hardware prices have been rising sharply. Increased demand from AI data centres has driven up the cost of RAM, SSDs, and hard drives, making large-scale storage projects significantly more expensive to maintain.

How The Backup Effort Worked

Members of the SaveMyrient community began coordinating downloads almost immediately after the shutdown announcement.

One moderator involved in the effort, known online as Ill-Economist-5285, confirmed that volunteers worked behind the scenes to download and verify the archive. According to posts shared in the community, the full mirror of the database has now been completed and validated.

The next step is distributing the data. The team is currently generating torrent files so the archive can be shared more widely, though organisers say torrents are likely a temporary solution while longer-term hosting options are explored.

Community members have also discussed launching an updated website in the future, though no official replacement platform has been announced yet.

What Happens When Myrient Goes Offline

The original Myrient website is still scheduled to shut down on March 31, 2026.

However, because the full archive has already been backed up, the data itself will not disappear when the servers are switched off. Instead, it will likely continue circulating through community mirrors, torrents, and future preservation projects.

Exactly what form that will take is still unclear. For now, though, retro gaming fans appear to have pulled off one of the largest grassroots preservation efforts the hobby has ever seen.

With hundreds of terabytes of classic games now safely copied, decades of gaming history will remain available for future preservation work and research.