BoardGameGeek
GameChest is built on top of BoardGameGeek.
Every game you find here starts with a BGG record: the title, edition, year, player count, playing time, designers, publishers, artwork, ratings and the rest of the extraordinary amount of information BGG has collected over the years.
This page is the slightly boring but important bit: what GameChest gets from BGG, what it can send back, and what belongs to GameChest rather than BGG.
First: thank you
BoardGameGeek has been cataloguing board games since 2000, and an enormous amount of what makes GameChest useful exists because thousands of people have spent years adding games, correcting records, identifying editions, uploading images and arguing — sometimes heroically — about whether something is really a 7.4.
GameChest isn't trying to recreate any of that.
Search for a game here and BGG provides the underlying game data. GameChest adds the bits that are specifically about your copy: whether you own it, what you paid, its condition, your photos, what you think it's worth, whether you want to sell it, and what eventually happened to it.
Without BGG, GameChest would be a remarkably elaborate list of prices attached to nothing. So, genuinely: thank you.
What GameChest gets from BGG
Game information
Titles, years, player counts, playing times, weights, rankings and ratings come from BGG's XML API2 through a registered application.
GameChest caches responses, backs off when BGG is busy and makes requests sensibly rather than repeatedly asking for the same thing.
Cover art
GameChest displays cover images from BGG. It doesn't hotlink them: each picture is fetched once by GameChest's own server and kept as a copy in its own storage, so BGG's image servers are asked for a picture once, not every time someone opens a shelf.
Those images remain the property of their respective copyright holders — publishers, artists and the BGG users who uploaded them. GameChest displays them because identifying a board game by staring at a wall of titles would be fairly grim; it doesn't claim ownership of them.
A ranked-games snapshot
If BGG can't be reached, GameChest can fall back to a local snapshot of BGG's published ranked-games list, refreshed weekly.
That's there so search can still do something useful when the live connection is unavailable. It isn't a replacement for BGG's database.
Your BGG collection
If you ask GameChest to import your BGG collection, it uses the username you provide to request your own collection through BGG's collection endpoint.
It doesn't go rummaging through anybody else's.
What GameChest can send back
If you choose Sync to BGG, GameChest can keep your BGG collection in step with what you've done here.
Games added to GameChest can be marked as owned on BGG. Games you sell can be marked as previously owned. GameChest does not delete your collection history.
Before anything changes, GameChest shows you exactly what it intends to do.
Changes are made individually and only where something has actually changed.
About signing in to BGG
BGG's public XML API is read-only, so updating a collection can't be done through it.
For that part, GameChest signs in to BGG as you and uses the same underlying interface used by BGG's own applications to update your own collection.
Your BGG password is used only to sign you in. GameChest does not store it, log it or send it anywhere other than BGG.
If you choose to stay signed in, GameChest keeps the session BGG returns after login. That session is encrypted and you can remove it at any time from Settings.
This write interface isn't part of BGG's documented public API, which means it may change or stop working. If that happens, GameChest will tell you the sync failed rather than cheerfully pretending everything is fine.
What GameChest isn't
It isn't affiliated with BoardGameGeek
GameChest is an independent project. It isn't endorsed by, sponsored by or otherwise affiliated with BoardGameGeek, Geekdo or their owners.
BoardGameGeek, BGG and Geekdo are trademarks of their respective owners. They're mentioned here because that is, quite literally, where the data comes from.
It isn't a replacement for BGG
BGG is the authority on the games themselves.
If GameChest says a game was published in 1997 and BGG says 1998, assume GameChest has got the wrong end of the stick.
GameChest is authoritative only about the information you've added about your copy: what you paid, its condition, your photographs, your valuation, whether you sold it and what you sold it for.
It isn't scraping BGG
GameChest doesn't crawl BoardGameGeek pages, bypass access controls or bulk-copy its database.
It uses BGG's available interfaces, makes requests deliberately and caches data where appropriate so it doesn't keep bothering BGG for information it already has.
It isn't commercial
GameChest is currently free. There are no adverts, no subscriptions and no selling of user data.
If that changes and GameChest becomes a commercial product, its use of BGG data will be revisited properly first. Becoming a business does not magically turn someone else's work into yours.
If you're from BoardGameGeek
Hello.
This page exists because GameChest depends on something you built, and we'd much rather be clear about how we're using it than hide the plumbing.
If anything here concerns you — the data being used, the way it's credited, the interfaces GameChest touches, or the way sync works — please get in touch.
If something needs changing, we'll change it. If something needs removing, we'll remove it.
GameChest is built on top of BGG. Being a good guest matters.
Contact [email protected]