You may not have heard of it, but this site has quietly become one of the most important tools in gaming today: when a title is delisted or its servers are about to go dark, Delisted Games flags it. We spoke with site manager Shawn Sackenheim about how the project evolved, what it has revealed about the industry, and why this kind of archive is no longer optional.
Gamers are getting louder. Movements like Stop Killing Games have put a spotlight on one of the industry’s ugliest truths: people don’t really “buy” video games in the way they think they do – they usually purchase licenses to access them. If a major company decides to remove a title from digital stores or shut down its servers, it can often do so with minimal consequences. And what used to be an occasional decision has started to look like a pattern, as more developers “pull the plug” to cut costs and focus resources on newer releases that tend to generate better returns.
So many publishers are willing to take this step that it’s become difficult to track which games are about to disappear from storefronts or lose their online functionality. That’s why projects like Delisted Games have become increasingly valuable, serving as public-facing trackers for constant removals and shutdowns across platforms.
It’s not a name everyone recognizes, largely because the project is small: it’s run by three people and kept alive by player contributions. But the mission is clear. Delisted Games catalogs titles that have been removed from stores or are scheduled to be delisted, and it also tracks server shutdowns. How does a site like this actually work, and how has it adapted as the pace of delistings accelerates? 3DJuegos contacted the site’s founder, Shawn Sackenheim, to learn how the initiative operates, what he thinks about the trend, and where the project goes next.
A website that’s necessary in today’s context
At its core, Delisted Games revolves around two things: delistings and server closures. According to the site’s own description, Sackenheim’s work is about “registering games you can no longer play and trying to answer the most important questions: When was it released? When will it disappear? Where can I continue playing it (legally)? And what the heck happened?”. He’s assisted by two users who joined with the goal of enriching the portal: HandMaskTar and n64ra.
The team aims to provide dates, data, and context for thousands of entries. However, because many removals are tied to contracts and NDAs, the exact reasons behind delistings can be hard to confirm – even if they do everything possible to verify what they publish. Interestingly, the project didn’t even begin as a website: it first started as a YouTube channel focused on games disappearing from digital libraries.
Sackenheim recalls: “It was 2015, and I was looking at my purchase history on my old Xbox 360 and was surprised to see items displaying the error: ‘No longer available’”. He began checking other games he owned, documenting the findings in videos (on a now-defunct channel), and viewers kept asking the same questions. Meanwhile, he felt that sites like Wikipedia and The Cutting Room Floor did a great job preserving development history and cut content, but almost nobody tracked games you “can’t play” anymore – or why they vanished. Around June 2016, he decided to build a website to gather and share that information.
Since then, Delisted Games has expanded dramatically in content, features, and traffic. Beyond posting news about upcoming removals, the site now includes platform-based rankings, calendars highlighting server shutdown dates, lists of games that have effectively disappeared forever, and even a smaller section dedicated to titles that unexpectedly return to stores.
One especially useful feature is a guide section dedicated to recovering discontinued games. Split by platform (PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, Xbox), it provides step-by-step instructions for accessing titles you previously bought but can no longer find in the storefront. The site explains that “when most games are discontinued, they are simply removed from the store where you purchased them. Your previous purchases are saved in a download history… The steps are different depending on the platform and can change without prior notice.”
Beyond the practical utility, Sackenheim says managing Delisted Games has helped him understand how digital distribution really works. He notes that it’s still far more common for a game to disappear suddenly than to be announced in advance – a problem that hits consoles particularly hard, since updating store listings can be cumbersome. That said, advance notices are becoming more frequent, especially for online games where players invested time and money, though the window between announcement and removal is often very short.
He also admits the work has impacted him deeply, in both good and bad ways. On one hand, it’s given him exposure to licensing, publishing conditions, development constraints, and the behind-the-scenes business structures that determine what lives or dies. On the other hand, seeing how long this has been happening – and how much it’s accelerating – is discouraging. He even took a break years ago because the shutdown volume was overwhelming, and readers (HandMaskTar and n64ra) offered to help cover the site while he recovered.
Still, Delisted Games remains online. And in some ways, its continued existence is a small miracle, because keeping it running isn’t easy. The hardest part is simply time: Sackenheim has managed the project for nearly a decade while balancing work, relationships, moves, and career changes. Meanwhile, the delisting trend has grown so quickly that the project could genuinely benefit from a much larger team of researchers and writers.
Barely surviving – but still doing the job
Delisted Games currently covers costs like web hosting, domain renewals, security, and a handful of paid plugins through Patreon and Ko-Fi donations. In other words, it survives because readers fund it – not because it generates real commercial revenue.
To reduce reliance on donations, Sackenheim experimented with ads. But in 2024 the project removed them, largely because they became intrusive, less profitable, and added unwanted strain on the server. Users benefited, but the sustainability challenge grew sharper.
Sackenheim explains that rising popularity actually makes things harder: traffic increases, the database expands, hosting gets more expensive, and AI bot activity has begun targeting the site. At the same time, they don’t sell products, ads are gone, affiliate earnings are minimal (because many covered games aren’t even for sale), and some expenses have increasingly come out of his own pocket.
Nevertheless, movements like Stop Killing Games have boosted awareness of what “ownership” really means in a digital era – and that has helped Delisted Games gain both readers and contributors. Sackenheim says every mention in articles, videos, or podcasts tends to push new users toward the site, which then spreads awareness through their own communities.
And as long as the support exists, Delisted Games will stay alive. As Sackenheim puts it: “I’m a very focused worker. I enjoy writing and reporting, finding links and details, and sharing them. I don’t have a secret to success or a grand plan; we’re just a handful of passionate gamers trying to keep up with this tragic side effect of industry changes.”
Source: 3djuegos
