Scraping Modern Games is a Nightmare

Hello. I’m writing this to compile some findings I’ve got when using Launchbox to scrape Windows games. I believe a revamp to this process could be the best, and most useful upgrade to Launchbox.

Firstly, let’s look at how Windows games are installed. You go to Tools → Import → Windows Games. Easy to do, but it only finds games in your Windows Start Menu. What?! This doesn’t make a ton of sense since little to no games end up even being there. That’s not what the Start Menu is even for. I had to then, upload them as “ROMs” for Windows. I tried to select my game folder of about 180 games… And it promptly shit itself because it tried to load upward of 100,000 files at once. Okay, so I’ll do it manually.

I diligently select every .exe file, and that ends up working! Thinking the entire time, what if selecting Folder would just show you all of the .exe and not every single file ever.

Now I’ve got my games. It missed a good half of them. Mostly indie games.

That brings me to my next gripe (I’m sorry this is just me complaining, but it leads somewhere!) which is, the scraping tool. Why can’t we select multiple sources to find games from? This is something I’d think should be standard, since it’s ridiculous to expect one platform to be able to find everything on the internet. So now I have to find metadata for about 120 games including box art, a screenshot or two, and a clear logo.

Jesus.

Not only that, but the art that is uploaded to the Launchbox database? Extremely low resolution, extremely dated, and ALL of them are different sizes. What in the actual hell.

So my proposition to streamline this process is as follows:

Update the importer for Windows to reflect modern standards.
Create optional integration with SteamGridDB and IGDB.
Have a minimum image resolution for game covers in the Launchbox database.
Add a cover art aspect ratio regulator into Launchbox under the options menu.

The last one is there so that you can set an aspect ratio for box art per platform.

I know these asks are pretty bonkers, and have been asked before. But it might be worth consideration.

I want to end this with saying thank you to the incredible development team at work with Launchbox. I do not, and will never regret, purchasing a lifetime license, and endlessly urging all my friends to do the same. I seem very complain-y in this message, but that comes from a place of love. In the last two days I’ve inputted nine thousand games into Launchbox, and isn’t that just incredible?

Seriously, thanks for what you do.

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Signed,

Conner Houghtaling

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