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Comment on 390TB video game archive being taken offline due to skyrocketing RAM, SSD, and hard drive prices — AI-driven supply squeeze results in closure of one of the largest online video game archives

rizzothesmall@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

What? How?

Like, fuck AI resource hogging, but the archive already existed on servers that are already built. It was already running on ram and drives that aren’t built into the specialist hardware required to run an AI data centre.

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Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
From the announcement on the Discord:

Information about the closure of Myrient

Hello everyone,

I have decided to shut down Myrient on 31 March 2026. Until then, the site will continue to remain available in its current state. Please download any content you find important, as you have around one month to do so.

There are several reasons for the closure:

Insufficient funding As traffic continued to increase last year, the amount of funding from donations remained the same. I have been paying more than $6000 out of pocket every month in order to cover the difference which is not sustainable.

Paywalled download managers In the past several months, many specialized download managers were created that completely bypassed the site, donation messages, and download protections. Some of these download managers locked certain features behind a paywall that required users to pay in order to gain access. The use of Myrient for commercial, for-profit purposes has always been strictly forbidden. Such egregious and abusive usage of the site cannot be tolerated anymore.

Rising RAM, SSD, and HDD prices Since last September, RAM, SSD, and HDD prices have surged dramatically and continue to rise due to the ongoing extreme demand for AI datacenters. This has caused Myrient’s hosting expenses to go up as well. Necessary upgrades to the storage and caching infrastructure only exacerbated the problem. 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.

There are still many other smaller reasons, I could go on and on about them, but nobody would want to read it.

In short, I can no longer afford to run the site.

If you have any comments, you can send them to support@erista.me (I will read all of them and might respond to a few).

Thanks for using Myrient over the years.
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detren@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
From the article:

Aside from that, RAM, SSD, and HDD prices have been steadily rising due to the AI infrastructure build-out, resulting in higher hosting expenses for Myrient as well. We’ve actually seen this with German data center giant Hetzner, which is hiking prices up to 37% starting April 1. The archiving site said it needed “necessary upgrades to the storage and caching infrastructure,” which it cannot afford due to memory chip and storage shortages.

The creator also complained about abusive users who were monetizing Myrient content. Not only did they bypass the donation messages and the site’s built-in download protections, but they also added a paywall that defeated the site’s policy against paywalls.

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