According to the Video Game History Foundation, only 13% of classic video games released in the US before 2010 are still commercially available. yag.im aims to be the ultimate destination where gamers worldwide can play any classic video game released in the past, directly in their browser — no installation required, and completely free. Our guiding principles include:

• Fully Open Source platform: all code is open and accessible;
• Multi-platform Support: utilizing containerized environments for diverse game runners;
• Installer-as-Code: easily contribute or update installers via GitHub PRs;
• Unified Gameplay Experience: seamless play in any modern browser with minimal load delays and input lag.

• Scalable, highly-available architecture: microservices (K8S for cloud, minikube for local deployments);
• Smooth gameplay streaming: WebRTC (gstreamer), supporting:
  • X11 and Wayland frames capturing;
  • video encoding hardware offload: iGPU (Intel HD), Nvidia;
• Games runners: DosBox, Wine, ScummVM etc wrapped into portable platform-independent containers (docker);
• Distributed NFS-based cloud storage with CoW support (BTRFS).

Proprietary Google Stadia (RIP), Amazon Luna and others mostly target AAA games or specific platforms (like Xbox Cloud Gaming and PlayStation Plus Premium). While Amazon Luna's collaboration with GOG looks promising for retro gamers, the collection remains tiny, and you still need to pay to play even if you own the original media.

These proprietary platforms have recently expanded their libraries of classic video games, but it's still required to purchase all games you want to play even if you own the original media. Also, not all games run on every OS (e.g. some require Windows and won't start on Linux).

Lutris excels at enabling native gameplay on Linux with strong community support. However, maintenance of installers can be cumbersome, and most of them are just stubs linking to GOG and Steam. Non-stub installers often lack quality. Because it relies on native components, it is limited to Linux OS. Even on Linux, launching a game can be quite the challenge due to OS dependencies across different Linux distributions.

retro-exo is an impressive collection of games spanning various genres and years. However, it lacks community support for adding new installers and primarily supports local execution in a Windows environment, with some Linux compatibility. The yag.im project has ported many games from exo, which can be found by searching e.g. the exoscummvm keyword in the ports collection.

LaunchBox includes automated import processes for modern Steam games and GOG classics, ROM files, MS-DOS games, and more. LaunchBox is like Lutris but with a more commercial, polished approach—prioritizing UI, ease of use, and a more refined experience. Windows-based but there is an Android version as well.

Many "Wine wrappers" are designed to work with a single runner (Wine) and offer limited support across different platforms.

In conjunction with popular open-source streaming solutions like Moonlight and Sunshine, you can create a DIY "cloud gaming" platform. This is likely where an experienced user would begin, provided they know how to configure all the components.

Based on your experience, choose one of the operational modes listed below.

Visit yag.im, find your favorite game and start playing. Try few games to let the platform choose the closest data center for you (TODO: make DC selection preemptive :). If you can't find your favorite game, share your requests for new games on our Discord Channel.

This is for advanced gamers, when you want to deploy and host yag.im in your own cloud or local infrastructure with minimal effort. To get started, follow the Self-Hosted setup guide for a local installation or the Cloud setup guide for cloud deployment.

In this mode, you can contribute to the project by creating new installers (ports). Start with Adding New Installers (Ports) tutorial.

If you want to contribute to development of this project, deploy all yag.im components locally following the Developer setup instructions.

yag.im respects the intellectual property rights and other proprietary rights of others.

Be sure the game you are asking to be removed actually contains the copyrighted content you are inquiring about.

yag.im does implement game pages that act as informational pages for promotional purposes only. Play a game, inspect it, and if it is indeed your copyrighted work, contact us. To send a claim, include the following information:

• Identification of the copyrighted work whose copyright you claim has been infringed.
• An exact description of where the material in question is located within yag.im.
• Your address, telephone number and email address.
• A statement by you that you have a good-faith belief that the disputed use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
• A statement by you, made under penalty of perjury, that the above information in your notice is accurate and that you are the owner of the copyright interest involved or are authorized to act on behalf of that owner.
• Your electronic or physical signature.

You may send an email to: dmca-removal@yag.im for all DMCA / Removal Requests.

Please note that if applicable under Section 512(f) of the DMCA any person who knowingly materially misrepresents that material or activity is infringing may be subject to liability for damages. Please take this seriously!