"These games are now gone for good"
Image: Damien McFerran / Time Extension
Emulation site
Vimm's Lair – which has been running since 1997 – has announced that it has been asked to remove many games from its archive.
"Vimm's Lair has been asked to remove many games from The Vault on behalf of Nintendo, Sega, Lego, and the ESA,"
says a statement on the site's main page. "While most of these games (and the hardware to play them) haven't been sold in decades, ultimately it's their prerogative, so these games are now gone for good."
As well as hosting and preserving access to many video games, Vimm's Lair also has a large selection of
emulators and
video game instruction manuals, as well as a
message board.
The site recently posted about the arrival of emulation on the iOS App Store, thanking "everyone who has recommended Vimm's Lair to
Delta users" but noting that the "surge in traffic is causing the webserver to run out of memory and crash. Repeatedly." The server eventually stabilised.
Many ROM-sharing sites have come under fire recently, with one of the most high-profile being
Forest of Illusion, which was focused on unreleased games.