Cartridges are durable, but they are not immortal. The soldering can corrode, the plastic shells can become brittle, and most critically, the battery used for save data can leak and damage the circuit board. While the mask ROM chips themselves are robust, they are finite. If a game is rare—such as the notorious Panic Restaurant or high-value titles like M.U.S.H.A. —the likelihood of the surviving physical copies being destroyed increases.

In essence, a ROM file is a perfect digital clone of the physical game. It contains the exact zeros and ones that the Genesis hardware would read. This is why the quest for "all ROMs" is technically a quest for accurate data preservation.

Sega still holds the copyright. Flooding the market with free ROMs disincentivizes Sega from creating mini-consoles or collections. Furthermore, modern indie developers rely on the "retro aesthetic" – they deserve to be paid for new Genesis games sold via Limited Run Games or Evercarts.