What happened
Myrient, a 390TB online video game archive, announced its shutdown by March 31, 2026. The archive's creator cited insufficient funding, escalating operational costs, and commercial misuse of content via abusive download managers. Monthly out-of-pocket expenses exceeded $6,000, with rising RAM, SSD, and hard drive prices, driven by an AI-driven supply squeeze, making the service unsustainable.
Why it matters
Data-intensive operations face increasing financial pressure as hardware costs rise, impacting long-term viability for founders and procurement teams. Myrient's closure, driven by escalating RAM, SSD, and hard drive prices, reflects the broader market squeeze from AI demand. This follows SK Hynix's dominance in the High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) market, indicating sustained high demand for advanced memory components. Organisations managing large digital assets must factor these rising infrastructure costs into their strategic planning.
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