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Twitch owned by Amazon made a small but strategic acquisition aimed at improving its search capabilities and better directing viewers to the exact content. The company is acquiring IGDB, the Internet Games Database (no relation to Amazon's IMDb), a website dedicated to combining all relevant game information into one comprehensive resource for players around the world. As a result of this acquisition, the IGDB database will now be integrated with Twitch's search and discovery feature set. However, the IGDB website itself will not be closed.
Founded in 2015 by Christian Frithiof and a small team based in Gothenburg, Sweden, IGDB supplies game content through community contributions and automation.
The site contains useful information for each game, such as genre, supported platforms, description, ratings and reviews of members and reviews, script, game modes, publisher, dates of exit, characters, etc. You can also find less common details such as the time required to play the game in question or the player's perspective offered by the game, among other things.
And similar to IMDb's mission to organize everything related to the entertainment industry, IGDB has enabled voice talents to claim their profile on their site, in addition to listing the credits associated with a given title .
To generate revenue, IGDB provided a Developer API Free use for smaller stores or $ 99 per month for up to 50,000 requests. Interested partners, such as ASUS, may request special prices. To date, IGDB was working with several thousand API users, we understand it well.
Twitch has confirmed the acquisition of TechCrunch in a statement.
"Every day, millions of people visit Twitch to discover and connect with their favorite communities and banners. We want to help users find more easily what they are looking for, "said a spokesman. "IGDB has developed a complete gaming database, and we are excited to use them to help us improve faster and evolve Twitch's research and discovery."
The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but it was probably a small financial transaction. IGDB has only a team of 10 people and has only collected $ 1.5 million to date, according to Crunchbase data.
From a strategic point of view, however, the acquisition has much more impact.
Twitch Chief Executive Emmett Shear spoke publicly about issues related to Twitch's search functionality and the need to improve it in this regard.
"We want every place on Twitch to help you discover. Today, nearly one in three people who come to Twitch use Search to find what she is looking for. Now, I will be the first to admit that our search function has not always been the best experience, "said Shear earlier this year, speaking in front of TwitchCon Berlin. A bad letter and the results of your search may return empty, or lead you to a streamer very different from the one you were looking for. So we are going to correct the research so that it really works, "he promised.
In recent weeks, there was evidence that something was happening at IGDB.
In a blog post dated August 19, 2019, IGDB announced the launch of a "large-scale migration of our backend, our database and our hosting" and stated that the service "was on the no change, some temporary and others more permanent ". As part of its changes, it prevents users from registering or updating their profiles, as well as their news, feeds, and recommendations features.
IGDB, now part of Twitch, merges its free and premium APIs into one free tier, cleans out other features, and migrates the infrastructure. Its IGDB website will continue to stay online.
"Our mission has always been to build the most complete gaming database in the world. Such a monumental business can be quite difficult when you are a small team of startups, "reads in a blog post of the IGDB. "By joining Twitch, we will be able to tap into their experience, resources and skills, which will allow us to accelerate our progress and provide the version of IGDB we have always dreamed of. In addition, our companies share the same culture, the same core values and the same passion for the game, making it the ideal partner, "he said.
It was common in the industry that Twitch previously used the competing data provider Giantbomb. As often, the company may have already discussed with IGDB the possibility of making a switchover that led to the acquisition. (The company declined to say how it could do this.) What differentiated IGDB from other API providers, such as Mobygames, was that it allowed its API to be used commercially, including by competing projects, and to cache and store data on local servers. data base.
The entire 10-person IGDB team will remain based in Sweden, but will report to Twitch through its Viewer Experience organization.
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