Hello everyone, I am an ordinary gamer from China. I recently learned that Sina Cloud has shut down its servers. This is the official notice; the service was permanently shut down on September 16. Lots of early Chinese internet content, especially retro gaming videos, were hosted on this service.
Sina Cloud could not help preserve these videos. It lacked manpower and storage resources, and it also faced huge copyright and legal risks. According to their service terms, data backup was the responsibility of users themselves.
I am not asking people overseas for help, nor am I complaining. I want to ask: after this event, what can regular players without technical knowledge do to help protect retro gaming culture?
These videos are not high-production, but they are collective memories for a generation. There is a general forum in China called Baidu Tieba. A community named Shichuan Meiti Bar on this platform carried out this rescue work. The cover image I attached is their forum announcement. This discussion is about cultural preservation, not about sharing the videos themselves.
I have some questions to discuss: Have you seen similar rescue projects for retro gaming videos? What did you think of them? What were the biggest technical difficulties? How did they handle copyright for the original videos? What kind of audience watched these videos?
Many of these old retro gaming videos were made by early creators from AcFun and Bilibili. Back in that era, neither AcFun nor Bilibili stored video files themselves. Uploaders hosted videos on external services like Sina Cloud, and these sites only provided the danmaku player and comment section. This is similar to early Niconico in Japan. The original Niconico also only offered the danmaku player while video files were stored on outside services.
I hope to hear your stories. I would love some warm perspectives.
An old internet cafe in China from the early 2000s, where many players discovered retro games.
Official shutdown notice for Sina Cloud
Fan-made banner for the community archive project
This is sad. I personally download all of my favorite old games and store them in multiple drives. Just the games I’ve always loved and always want to play. I have a couple of TB of them in about 4 places. That’s honestly all you can do going forward. Download as many of old games as you can and hope for the best.
This is where you get to the idea that being a digital hoarder can be good for the culture.
The hardest part is not technical. It is whether new players will explore these stories. My opinion is pessimistic. More and more people are interested in retro games, but few people are willing to watch those old videos from over ten years ago.
If you are patient, let me explain. I will only talk about retro gaming videos. 2016 was a turning point for video websites in China. Before 2016, many Chinese players knew little about console games. The videos made by veteran retro gamers were relatively rough, and only old players paid attention to them. The turning point came in 2016. Some new players got to know console games through PS4. Content creation became popular, and retro games started to gain more attention. Online shopping also became common. Many players who played pirated FC, MD and arcade games could get official game consoles.
Many players from that era are busy with work, taking care of elders and raising children. They long to talk with people who share the same hobby. I am 27 years old. I have a 40-year-old friend who has played fighting games for 20 years. Once we talked about classic fighting games for an entire afternoon. I can feel his genuine passion.
Younger players like me may be interested in retro games. But sadly, all my old gaming friends are busy with their own lives now. Maybe I don’t need to cling to this regret. As long as I can remember those good times, that is enough.
Have you ever made retro gaming videos? Even if you never uploaded them online, feel free to share your story
Does the Internet Archive have any records of the internet in China? I am not familiar with its practices.
There are definitely retro video gaming preservation sites around, but I do not know of them.
You might also want to make an account and ask on hexbear or lemmy.ml, lemmy.world has a weird anti-China bias even for politically neutral stuff like this.
Out of the three, only lemmy.world is allowed in China.
Ha! Ironic.
