Many times we have treated video games as if their availability was guaranteed, even when they depended on discs, digital stores and servers that could disappear. What we have seen this week reminds us that preserving them requires more than will: we need supports that survive and organizations capable of cataloging them, maintaining them and opening them to researchers and the public. Sony has decided to close one of those avenues for future releases. Almost at the same time, Germany has dropped one of the most ambitious public projects that existed to prevent that memory from being lost.
The closure is already underway. The Internationale Computerspielesammlung, known as ICS, is in the process of dissolution after the public funding that supported it expired at the end of April 2026. GamesWirtschaft notes that the federal government refused to renew its share of support and the partners voted unanimously to dissolve the society. The decision does not erase the existing collections at once, but it does leave the shared database and the infrastructure that allowed it to be consulted without defined continuity, the future of which remains under legal and technical review.
An archive of more than 60,000 games. The ICS brought together records and funds contributed by institutions such as the Computerspielemuseum in Berlin, the USK, the game association and the DIGAREC research center. The collection encompassed cartridges, floppy disks, CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray, as well as boxes, manuals, associated materials and hardware. Of course, what could be publicly consulted since April 2019 was the digital database, not the games themselves. The physical pieces remain in the hands of the proprietary entities.
The ambition went much further. The ICS aspired to bring together in one place the funds that were still distributed among its partners and turn the whole into a stable tool for researchers, media and specialists. The plan included facilitating access through automated emulation and creating a permanent public headquarters in the German capital region. The complete leap was never consolidated: a repository already existed, but permanent institutionalization, public headquarters and the access provided through emulation were missing. That second phase remained uncompleted.
The money did not find a stable outlet. The aid came from the Berlin Senate and the Federal Commissioner for Culture, but was linked to a temporary phase of the initiative. When the video game policy passed to the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space in 2025, it studied whether it could turn the ICS into a permanent institution. He ultimately concluded that the model was not economically viable due to the scale of the work required.
Preserving also means guaranteeing access. The scenario left by these two movements does not only imply that there are fewer objects to save or fewer projects capable of organizing them. It also weakens the ability to consult, study and understand these games decades from now, when they will depend on hardware, documentation and systems that may no longer exist. The coincidence between Sony’s announcement and the fall of the ICS points in that direction: the video game memory does not disappear all at once, but when the structures that keep it available are removed, one by one.
Images | Sei
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