The sites we lost, and why each one died
Most lists of fun websites are written once and never checked again, which is why so many of them are half dead. We check ours by loading every site in a real browser on a schedule, and removing whatever fails.
This is the record of what that removed. Not an estimate — the actual list, with the actual reason each one came out. It is published because a maintained list is only as trustworthy as its willingness to show you what it threw away.
The pattern is stark. Of 57 removals, 44 were genuinely dead and 13 were alive but had started refusing to be embedded. And the dead ones were overwhelmingly the same kind of thing: unofficial game mirrors on free hosting, which is the most fragile arrangement on the web.
| Site | Host | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| Minecraft (Ruffle mirror) | maddox05.github.io | GitHub Pages 404 — the repository was deleted |
| Cookie Clicker (mirror) | coolubg.github.io | GitHub Pages 404 — mirror removed; the original at cookieclicker.com is fine |
| Cuphead | bitlifeonline.github.io | GitHub Pages 404 |
| Smash Karts | webglmath.github.io | GitHub Pages 404 |
| Monkey Mart | slope-game.github.io | GitHub Pages 404 |
| Jetpack Joyride | slope-game.github.io | GitHub Pages 404 |
| Super Mario Bros Online | super-mario-bros-online.github.io | GitHub Pages 404 |
| Doom | lemon-web.net | Answered 200 with a "page not found" page — a soft 404 |
| Draw Climber, Archery, Golf Adventures | cdn.gamesnacks.com | Object storage returned AccessDenied — the files were removed |
| Every Second | everysecond.io | HTTP 503 — "this site was paused as it reached its usage limits" |
| Nite Casino | nite.casino | HTTP 525 — Cloudflare could not reach the origin server |
| Bongo Cat | bongo.cat | Alive, but refuses to be embedded |
| Polytrack | kodub.com | Alive, but refuses to be embedded |
| Pixel Thoughts | pixelthoughts.co | Alive, but refuses to be embedded |
| Radiooooo | radiooooo.com | Alive, but refuses to be embedded |
| Google AI Experiments | experiments.withgoogle.com | Alive, but refuses to be embedded |
Two things are worth taking from this. The first is that a 404 is the least common way a site dies — far more of them answer perfectly and serve something useless, which is why a status-code check is not enough and every one of these was opened in a real browser.
The second is that unofficial mirrors are the most fragile thing on the web. Nearly every dead entry above was a game hosted on somebody else’s free account, and those disappear without notice or explanation. Games on their own domains almost never do.
Questions
How do you know a website no longer exists?
We load it in a real headless browser rather than checking a status code, because a page can answer 200 OK and still be a parked domain, a soft 404 or an empty frame. A site is only removed after failing twice, since a single timeout is often just a slow host.
Why do so many browser game sites disappear?
Most are unofficial mirrors hosted free on GitHub Pages, GitLab or similar. They exist at the discretion of whoever made the account, and vanish when that account is closed or the repository is deleted. Games hosted on their own domain by their own author are far more durable.
Every site above was loaded in a real browser and verified working before this was published. See the full catalogue.