hello lovelies, happy august :3
hope everyone is having a great summer and exploring some awesome old web resources and sites. this month we’ve yapped about blinkies, gifs and old flash games on our social media platforms, and the video game talk is gonna continue in this edition of the newsletter =]
first though - we have a long-awaited cowsite feature to go on about. i won’t keep you long, so let’s get started!
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we’ve come to make an announcement.
a cowsites announcement, in fact. a cowsites announcement so awesome that cows everywhere are sensing the positive disruption in the force (and being encouraged to update their cowsites).
and we begin with a thank you - to everyone who asked for a way to be able to view other cowsites and see what other people have been making. because now, it’s here.
★ welcome to the cowshed, baby! ★
the cowshed is a page on cowsites where you can see other cowsites - the ones there already are folks who let us know they wanted to be a part of the grand opening of the cowshed, so a massive THANK YOU to those lovely people! peep it below =]
to check it out, head to https://cowsites.net/cowshed/
AND, there’s a nifty little button at the top that lets you add your own site to the ‘shed - if you want people to see your beautiful work, go ahead and get yourself on there! if you have multiple sites, select which one(s) you’d like to add, and there’s a little dropdown menu with the tags you can filter by at the top of the cowshed - this makes it easier for other cowshed users to find exactly what kind of sites they’re interested in =]
if you have any questions or feedback about the cowshed, feel free to pop us a message!
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and now, onto gaming
the news this summer has been cursed for the video game industry, and catastrophic for media preservation.
those of you who are less into video games may be thinking, cowsites, i don’t gaf, why are we talking about this?
we’re talking about this because the old web relies on preservation – when we aren’t able to access the web from 20 or 30 years ago, we begin to lose the essence of what it stood for - freedom to express the self, and the newfound magic of the internet superhighway. it was new, and those times reflect that. similarly, when we lose access to video games, we lose important parts of technology history and childhood memories which are easily preserved, if not for corporate greed.
1. sony have announced that all ps5 games published after 2028 will not be receiving physical discs
this lowkey feels like old news by now, but hey - i wanna talk about it anyway because what the hell. we’ve made a little statement about this on our socials already, so bear with us - here’s a tiny recap of why this is terrible and horrible, for those who missed it:
purchasing a digital game does not grant you ownership of the game – it grants you a license to download and play it. this license can be revoked by the publisher at any time, meaning you’re left without a game, without a refund. should this happen, the game itself will be unobtainable in its original form – which when we’re all nostalgic for this era in 20 years’ time, will be a nightmare.
on top of that, the secondhand game market is fucked, as are brick and mortar game stores. you can no longer lend your sibling the disc for the game you both got for the holiday season, and you can’t sell the disc later to make a few quid back. most of my game collection has come from second hand stores, my favourite of which closed over a decade ago due to financial pressure. things are NOT any better now. sad times.
and if nothing else, the experience of opening a game box will just be… gone. some of my most fond gaming memories started with the opening of the box – reading the manual, looking for easter eggs, references and little jokes in the included pamphlet, and reading all of the information on the back of the box. special editions would come with little goodies, extra codes, or the box itself came in a cardboard sleeve (or a steelbook, if you’re feeling fancy). this experience simply won’t exist. you don’t get to admire the disc art anymore, or hold the damn thing in your hands. sigh.
2. destiny 2 received its final content update in june
https://www.bungie.net/7/en/News/article/d2_may_21_2026
this one is near and dear to me personally, so i’ll keep it short - the game wasn't everyone's cup of tea, with its heavy seasonal content schedule. a lot of people criticised how it preyed on the fear of missing out to incite players to buy each new content pack. but they've fixed this problem in june - by shutting the development down.
but with little warning, destiny 2 was given its last content update at the start of june, axing 50% of their development staff. on the day of the update, 800,000 active players were logged at once, and 2 million unique log-ins were detected throughout the whole day. the community really came together for this one and it’s beautiful, but poses a question for how live service games fit into the video game preservation scene.
they’re almost impossible to bring back once they’re gone. even if the code can be ripped, the playerbase will never be the same as when it was live and officially supported; the casual fans will be lost, and only those who were more heavily invested will care enough to go through the bother of emulating the experience and finding private servers. luckily, destiny 2 will remain playable, but there is no guarantee for how long. so guardians, make the most of it.
but what happens when they do get shut down for good? well, we’ll find out soon as…
3. mario kart tour is being shut down in september
we’re about to see a large-scale live service game shut down. granted, it’s a mobile game, but due to mobile gaming’s naturally predatory monetisation tactics, it acts as an even bigger example of what exactly we lose when a live service game is discontinued.
yes, we lose access to the game itself. as a live service model, the game cannot simply be downloaded and rehosted, as it replies on multiplayer servers. that, and it’s nintendo we’re talking about - they’d crack down on that INSTANTLY. but when those live services games go, we lose access to all progress, unlocks, paid-for cosmetics and additional content from the years it was active. it simply ceases to exist.
mario kart tour may not have been nintendo’s biggest success, but it was revolutionary for the franchise; it unlocked the game for those who cannot own a nintendo console, or afford a mainline mario kart game. releasing right before the covid pandemic, it carried school friendship groups through a rough time where routine was turned on its head, and kids were able to play together while socially distanced between lessons. many look back on it fondly, even if it isn’t the best entry in the series. rest easy, mario kart tour.
okay, enough of the slightly grim news.
obviously, there has been some awesome public backlash in response to all of this news, and in a way, it’s actually strengthened the gaming community; people have come together in a way we’ve not seen for a while, to speak up and let these companies know the harm they’re doing to the video gaming industry (mostly aimed at sony). a lot of people are being encouraged to collect physical media, or revisit their older consoles in order to avoid live server-based gaming. some have reported prices of playstation 1 and 2 era discs increasing in line with consumer demand - that bit kind of sucks, actually, but it's nice to know people are trying to buy them!
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welcome back if you hate video games and read absolutely none of that - no judgement!
here are some neat old web-core resources, as usual =]
https://flashpointarchive.org is “the world's largest effort to preserve web-based games, animations, and interactive experiences.” this includes the flash and shockwave games a lot of us grew up on. they do an awful lot of hard work, and allow us to revisit browser games, a lot of which have been unplayable in-browser since 2020. if you’re unfamiliar with them, definitely give them a look!
and here’s an awesome article on the internet achieve on why the preservation of flash projects is so important: https://blog.archive.org/2025/08/06/vanishing-culture-why-preserve-flash/
(they have a whole series on’ vanishing culture’, which is linked in the article - well worth exploring!)
who remembers 2000s gaming magazines? the kind with slightly too raunchy jokes, weird fake cheat codes and the craziest rumours and gaming ‘leaks’ that often turned out to be completely false. here’s an archive of exactly those:
retromags is volunteer run and a preservation effort for an era of gaming magazines that’s behind us. even if a full copy has not been preserved, often the cover art is still available to view, which is super neat. plus, if you have a stack of old gaming mags somewhere – check it out. you might be able to contribute to the effort!
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as always, thanks for reading, it’s a pleasure to have you =]
if you have any topics you would like to see discussed, or would like to discuss them with us in a short, interview-style layout, please get in touch! we’re super open – you can reach out via instagram (@cowsites) or email (hello@cowsites.net) to let us know your thoughts <3
and in case you missed it – we have a ko-fi that we opened last month! if you appreciate the work we do and wanna buy us a coffee, you can pop us a couple of dollars/pounds/pebbles etc over at https://ko-fi.com/cowsites =] <3
And LAST THING i promise – we recently claimed our trustpilot account. if you love cowsites (or hate it, honesty is important) please let us know your thoughts over there! it helps us bring new folks in who need super cool, ai-free personal websites =] and if you’ve already left a review, THANK YOU! we love you <3
take care of yourselves, and keep in touch!!
all the best =]
the cowsites team <3
