How we track takedowns
Every port in the directory is checked once a day. Besides HTTP errors, the check reads the page text, because many ports keep their page and title after a takedown and only swap the game for a short notice. When the text reads like a takedown notice, a person reviews it and marks the entry Taken down. Ports we don’t list in the directory get a row here when a notice, the author’s post or the site itself shows a copyright claim.
Each row has:
- Taken down: the date of the notice or the author’s post. When only an approximate date is known, the row says what it is based on.
- Online for: days from the first public release to the takedown. “Same day” means the port went up and came down within the same day.
- How: a DMCA notice to the host or author, a GitHub DMCA notice, a cease and desist letter, or the author pulling it after a legal threat. “Not stated” means the notice doesn’t say.
- Evidence: the primary source first (the notice, the author’s post, the site), then reporting.
What is not counted
- Ports their authors closed on their own, without a claim. For example, its author closed OpenSA, a GTA San Andreas browser build, on 25 August 2026, and no notice was mentioned.
- Ports that are only offline or paywalled: those stay in the directory with the status Down.
- Emulators, cheats and piracy tools, which are a different fight. Nintendo’s notices against Switch emulator mirrors are an example.
We never link to game files, ROMs or ISOs, and the sources here are notices, posts and articles, not copies of the ports.
FAQ
Why are so many game ports being taken down?
Since early October 2026, AI coding tools have made it quick to rebuild or port old games, and dozens of browser versions went viral on X within days. Most of them recreate commercial games that are still sold, so publishers such as Activision and Rockstar have been filing DMCA notices with the hosts or with the authors directly.
Is it illegal to play a browser port of an old game?
We can't give legal advice. What the rows here show is that publishers act against ports of games they still sell, whether the port is a browser remake, a recompilation or a reimplementation, and whether its code is on GitHub or on its own site.
Do takedowns show up in GitHub's DMCA repository?
Only when the port's code was on GitHub. Most of the browser ports in this wave ran on their own domains or on hosts like Railway and Cloudflare Pages, so their takedowns never appear in github.com/github/dmca. That is why we record the evidence on each port's own site and in the author's posts.
How do you know a port was taken down and not just offline?
A port only gets a row when there is evidence of a copyright claim - the notice itself, the author's own post, or a notice on the port's site. Our daily check reads each tracked port's page and flags text such as "taken down due to a DMCA request", which a person then confirms. Ports that are simply offline are marked Down in the directory, not listed here.
Can I use this data?
Yes. It is free to cite with a link to this page, and the same rows are available as JSON at /takedowns.json, and as JSON and CSV in the fan-port-takedowns repository on GitHub under CC BY 4.0. If you know of a takedown we're missing, or we got a detail wrong, email [email protected] with a source.