Dr. Colin Post, assistant professor of information, library, and research sciences at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, was well into research for a project exploring how libraries can preserve and provide access to digital video games when the Trump administration rescinded already-awarded funding from science, arts, humanities, and museum grants. That grant, he told Game Developer, was supposed to fund a virtual games and libraries conference to bring together librarians, game developers, publishers, and others to talk about what a library game collection program could look like.
Post had to stop planning the virtual forum when funding was cut in April 2025. Now, he’s back on track. Attorneys General in more than 20 states immediately filed lawsuits to fight the Institute of Museum and Library Services cuts. They won months later in November 2025. The Trump administration appealed the decision, but withdrew it in April 2026.
“Today’s action finally lays to rest President Trump’s executive order that threatened countless library services available to anyone who walks into one of our nation’s 115,000 public, school, academic and other libraries,”American Library Association president Sam Helmick said at the time.
That win reinstated Post’s funding, allowing him to begin organizing theDigital Games in Libraries Virtual Forum, which is set to take place in October 2026. Money from the grant is going to pay for the virtual event space, Gather, and 11 different speakers, who range from lawyers, game developers, researchers, and librarians. From there, Post will use funds to build out working groups to figure out key issues, like the technicalities involved in collecting and distributing games through libraries.
Post’s research could not have come at a more apt time. Sony Interactive Entertainment announced in early July that it isending physical disc production for new PlayStation gamescome January 2028. From then on, people will have to purchase PlayStation video games digitally. It effectively wipes out the secondhand market for new games.
“This is a natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs,” Sony Interactive Entertainment Content Communications director Sid Shumanwrote on the PlayStation blog. “This transition will enable us to align more closely with how most of our community prefers to access and play games today.”
“The entirety of a medium is at risk of not being preserved”
Post said Sony’s announcement shows that digital preservation is more important than ever on a mainstream level. Lots of developers—specifically, independent developers—are living in a disc-less present, he said, distributing their games on Itch.io or Valve Software’s Steam platform. As a result, he explained digital games must be preserved at all scales. Those digital-only are at risk of being lost. Post pointed to the end of Flash support, which wiped out a lot of things on the internet, as an example of what can happen without ample support for preservationists.
Post’s early research found that libraries and other archives don’t have any standardized way to collect digital games. Libraries can and do distribute physical discs, but that leaves out a massive number of digital-only games—a category that will only grow when big publishers ditch physical media altogether. Many modern games on physical discs still need access to the internet and a company’s servers, which already complicates matters.
Being unable to collect digital games means there’s a big gap in what’s being preserved, and it’s not because developers don’twanttheir games preserved.
“One of the really encouraging findings from those conversations was that there was just across the board is enthusiastic interest in [game developers] having their games collected in libraries, which if you sort of only listen to the Entertainment Software Association and their lobbyists, you would think that libraries are out to destroy games, and you hear the same thing from like book publishers too,” Post said.
With a framework for collection, preservation, and distribution set up, more people will gain access to more games. It’ll be easier for teachers to use games in their coursework, and for researchers to access crucial, in-game information.
Post pointed to a group of researchers at the University of Sydney who developed a pilot project called Ludolio. It’s a system for lending digital games to universities or schools. So far, Post said the project is collecting games from Australian game developers. Given it’s the same sort of model Post is looking to build, he has begun collaborating with the group.
“We’ve seen the warning signs that this is a thing we need to be thinking about, and then the announcement,” Post said. “It’s not some niche thing. The entirety of a medium is at risk of not being preserved. We can’t trust Sony, we can’t trust Microsoft to preserve things. They’re going to keep Halo and Call of Duty available, but those things are going to become enshittified as well.”
He continued: “If we don’t start taking collection action now among the people and institutions that care about the culture, care about preserving the work, then we’re going to lose out.”
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