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