The Video Game History Foundation launches its digital library later this month, providing access to over 1,500 videogame magazines and 'never-before-seen game development materials'

An image of the Video Game History Foundation's physical library, showing rows of bookshelves filled with old magazines, and a life-size statue of Lara Croft in the far right corner

(Image credit: Video Game History Foundation)

The videogame industry doesn't have the best track record at preserving its past, though this is slowly changing with the help of independent organisations. One such organisation is the Video Game History Foundation, which today announced it will be launching its digital library platform later this month.

Posting on BlueSky, the VGHF revealed that the digital library will officially launch on January 30th, stating, "Good things come to those who wait!". No follow up information regarding the launch was provided, with the post simply stating, "We'll tell you all about it then".

However, in a statement (via VGC) the foundation explained that the library includes "never-before-seen game development materials", as well as "artwork, press kits, and promo materials from iconic video games". The library will also allow readers to access 1,500 out-of-print videogame magazines stretching back to the early 1980s. This includes issues of the recently departed Game Informer, previously the US' longest-running videogame magazine before it was closed abruptly by owner Gamestop last year.

The organisation's founder, Frank Cifaldi, also showed off some of the library's functions in a Bluesky thread earlier this week. The magazine library will be fully text searchable, organisable by chronology, and allow users to filter mags by region, platform, publisher, and more. In Cifaldi's example, he searches for "every videogame magazine in our collection in chronological order that says 'Metroidvania'.

Originally founded in 2017, the Video Game History Foundation has numerous projects dedicated to protecting the medium's past. This includes preservation of videogame source code and its physical library of videogame media that delves even farther back than its digital equivalent. In 2023, the VGHF conducted a survey where it concluded that just 13% of videogame history is "represented in the current marketplace," with the remaining 87% inaccessible without resorting to piracy or travelling to an archive. Last year, meanwhile, it proposed changes to DMCA regulations to allow remote sharing of "out of print" videogames by libraries and collections, an exemption which the US Copyright Office refused.

Rick has been fascinated by PC gaming since he was seven years old, when he used to sneak into his dad's home office for covert sessions of Doom. He grew up on a diet of similarly unsuitable games, with favourites including Quake, Thief, Half-Life and Deus Ex. Between 2013 and 2022, Rick was games editor of Custom PC magazine and associated website bit-tech.net. But he's always kept one foot in freelance games journalism, writing for publications like Edge, Eurogamer, the Guardian and, naturally, PC Gamer. While he'll play anything that can be controlled with a keyboard and mouse, he has a particular passion for first-person shooters and immersive sims.