Streaming platform Twitch will soon have the might of the Internet Games Database behind it. The IGDB, a comprehensive – and really useful – database that offers overviews of games, even including things like estimated ‘time to beat’ ranked by how thorough you want to be, has announced that it’s “joined the Twitch family.”
In a post on site Medium (via PCGamer) Jerome Richer De Forges – IGDB’s product owner – talks a bit about what this means. He says “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.”
He adds that IGDB is also “taking this opportunity to clean up some features and migrate infrastructure in order to make room for new and improved tools.”
This marks a change for Twitch, and based on comments made by its CEO earlier this year at TwitchCon Berlin, it looks like the addition of IGDB’s backend will be a positive one for the site. Reported by TechCrunch, Twitch CEO Emmett Shear previously said “we want every place on Twitch to help you get discovered. Today, nearly one in three people who come to Twitch use Search to find what they’re looking for.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that our search function hasn’t always been the best experience,” he said, adding, “so we’re going to fix search so it actually works.” Hopefully, the acquisition of IGDB and incorporation of its backend will help to improve on this aspect of the site.
It’s surely an exciting move for IGDB too, given that it started with a first beta version only as recently as 2014, and is run by a “small startup team.” De Forges says “this opportunity takes IGDB to a whole new level, giving us the opportunity to be an even bigger part of your gaming life.”