Twitch has acquired the Internet Gaming Database

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With the IMDB of games behind it, Twitch might be easier to search now.

(Image credit: Twitch)

Streaming service Twitch has acquired the Internet Games Database. The IGDB is basically the IMDB of videogames, a directory of information about games ranging from their ratings, genres, and themes to crowdsourced data about how long they take to beat, and lists of reviews (which annoyingly include include pre-release previews and impressions as well). Digital storefronts can pay to use IGDB's API, which is how the database makes money.

Previously Twitch's game directory has been based on Giant Bomb, which means that searching for streams of specific games has been pretty spotty—especially when it comes to smaller indie games. With the IGDB as their search backend, hopefully that will improve.

In a post on Medium about the acquisition, IGDB product owner Jerome Richer De Forges wrote, "First things first: the API is here to stay, and we are merging our premium and free tiers into a single new free tier. Going forward, that means that you will now contribute information to Twitch as well as IGDB and the thousands of apps, services, and websites that are powered by this information."

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Jody Macgregor
Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.