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Amazon’s Twitch has purchased IGDB, a startup devoted to creating an informational resource for video games comparable to Amazon’s other subsidiary IMDb.
“By joining Twitch, we will be able to tap into their experience, resources, and skills, which will enable us to accelerate our progress and deliver the version of IGDB we all always dreamed about,” IGBD product owner Jerome Richer De Forges said in a statement. “Not only that, our companies share the same culture, core values, and passion for gaming – making this the perfect fit.”
De Forges will serve as product manager at Twitch, overseeing the IGDB website and integrating its information into Twitch. IGDB’s game listings include professional reviews from 55 sources, reviews posted by the website’s 55,510 members, and details on the game’s developer, publisher, duration, and platforms. The company was founded in 2014.
De Forges said the company is planning on migrating its infrastructure and cleaning up some of the website’s features in order to add new tools. They have also eliminated the website’s premium memberships, which cost $99 per month and were meant to allow companies to better access the website’s data by increasing the number of results per page and website requests that a user can make. IGDB has temporarily suspended new registrations and changes to avatars, backgrounds, and profiles on the website and is also using the migration to bring it online with recent European Union internet restrictions.
Serge Ulankin, editor-in-chief of games database and tracker RAWG, issued a statement congratulating IGDB where he predicted that the website’s data would be used to improve Twitch’s search functions, product recommendations, and profiles for creators and companies.
“This proves that the market as a whole needs an easy-to-use solution to build new services and enrich existing ones,” he said. “The deal between Twitch and IGDB shows that the market does not only need it but also actively seeks opportunities to get a hold of such data first.”
