Let's save video game history together!

December 2, 2025 is Giving Tuesday, a day of worldwide giving! In many ways this is the most important day of the year for us, as the generosity we see during this period helps us determine what we can accomplish next year.

Giving Tuesday is also the beginning of our month-long Winter Fundraiser! All month long we'll be reflecting on the past year of game preservation, and celebrating history with you with a series of videos and events.

Unlike many similar organizations, our funding relies almost entirely on individual contributions from generous donors just like you. If you're able to give this year, there is no better time than right now!

2025 was our biggest year ever, and we've only just begun.

2025 was our eighth year of operation, and we are beyond proud to say that our impact has grown consistently, year-on-year, during that time. We invite you to dig in to our 2025 impact post on GameHistory.org, but we'll give you a few highlights below.

Library now open for all!

This year we opened the doors on the world's only dedicated video game history research library! And there's no need to plan a trip or even visit during office hours: our digital archive is entirely online, and entirely free to use for everyone across the globe.

The impact was immediate and overwhelming. We knew people were hungry for video game history, but we didn't know that we would entertain over 100,000 unique visitors. Students, documentarians, academics, researchers, fans, curiosity-seekers, and even commercial video game producers have all benefitted from this unique research tool.

The Video Game History Hour is BACK!

You asked and we listened! Our podcast, The Video Game History Hour, made its return in 2025 (well, okay, technically at the end of 2024) with an all new format.

We're now up to 145 episodes of in-depth, meaningful conversation about video game history and its effect on all of our lives. We capture never-heard oral history, give behind-the-scenes insights into the Foundation and its team, talk to others around the world who are part of the game preservation ecosystem, and elevate how we both talk and think about the history of games.

Highlights from 2025 include a discussion with Baldur's Gate 3's Lawrence Schick about the beginnings of his over forty years(!) of designing games, a deeply personal conversation with Spyro co-creator Craig Stitt, and new research on the intersection of femininity and games.

A crucial piece of history, free for everyone

Computer Entertainer, aka The Video Game Update, was a monthly newsletter that ran out of Los Angeles between 1982 and 1990. It is a remarkable historical resource: not only is it the only magazine still covering home video games after the famous 1980s market crash, it is also one of the only resources we have for actual release dates from the industry's golden age.

In 2025 we acquired the rights to this precious resource and made it free for everyone - we've released it under a Creative Contributions license that lets anyone use it however they need to. Learn more at our blog post!

Hitting the road, strengthening the community, and more

We gave talks at conferences, dug through basements looking for artifacts, hosted live preservation events, and even hosted a pop-up museum exhibit. Learn about all this and more at our 2025 impact post. Video game history doesn't stop, so neither do we!

Game history events all December long

Giving Tuesday is just the beginning of our month! We like to "go big" during the holiday season, and this year is no exception. We're hosting the public debut of a heartfelt talk we gave at an industry-only event, opening up a groundbreaking collection of material many thought was lost forever, doing a live archaeological dig hoping to find unreleased games, premiering a documentary about the creation of the NES that was 15 years in the making, and publishing an actual video game! Whew!

Help us grow and thrive in 2026!

Unlike many other historical preservation institutions, the Video Game History Foundation relies almost entirely on individual giving. We're proud to say that despite the downswing in the economy and in available grant funding, our organization has remained happy and healthy and has increased our impact year-on-year, every year, since we began, thanks to generous donors just like you.

But we can only keep this going if we meet our end-of-the-year goal! If video game history has impacted your life, if you'd like to preserve the culture of our past for generations to come, please give if you're able. Our minimum goal of $30,000 this year ensures that we can continue operations without changing how we do things, or scrambling for financial opportunities to keep us going. Anything past that helps us plan on how to expand our programs and our impact in new and exciting ways!

Video Game History Foundation Winter Fundraiser 2025

Help us continue to preserve, celebrate, and teach the history of video games!