World's largest public video game archive shuts down as Germany pulls €1.5M in funding

Germany's Internationale Computerspielesammlung (ICS), the world's largest publicly accessible video game archive, is shutting down after its €1.5 million in public funding expired and was not renewed by the federal government. The project's shareholders voted unanimously to close it, leaving the future of its database of over 60,000 cataloged games uncertain, according to reports from Tom's Hardware, notebookcheck.net, and timeextension.com.

3 sources

Tom's HardwareGermany's massive 60,000-game preservation project collapses after €1.5 million funding dries up — world's largest game archive was entirely publicly available, now abandoned just as Sony kills physical medianotebookcheck.netGermany's €1.5M state-backed video game archive ICS shuts down, 60,000+ games at risktimeextension.comGermany's Largest Video Game Archive to Close After Funding Expires

The ICS began in 2019 as a joint effort between the Computer Games Museum Berlin and the Entertainment Software Self-Regulation body, but its funding from the Berlin Senate and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media expired in April. Timeextension.com reported that the closure marks "a significant loss for video game preservation efforts in Germany."

"The world's largest game archive was entirely publicly available, now abandoned just as Sony kills physical media," Tom's Hardware noted, highlighting the broader timing of the archive's collapse amidst industry trends that threaten game preservation. The archive's shutdown leaves a critical gap in publicly funded efforts to safeguard gaming history.

Notebookcheck.net observed that the closure "follows a broader trend of game preservation challenges, including the recent shutdown of the fan-run Myrient archive due to rising infrastructure costs." The ICS's closure underscores the vulnerability of even large-scale preservation projects when they depend on government funding that can lapse without renewal.