Mark items included in an owned Pack as owned

tur1ng

Hi, I extensively use the collection feature of the site to keep track of games I do and don't own on PC.
One issue I noticed is that, even if I own a pack such as "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt -Game of the Year Edition", the items included in it ("The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt" + DLCs) are not automatically marked as owned. This would be a very helpful feature for people like me who have lots of games and sometimes aren't sure whether they already own a game or not.

Quoyque

+1. You can do same feature for collection. If you have all games which are included in one pack, mark this pack as owned also. In case from 1st post: if you have The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Blood and Wine, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Hearts of Stone - you own The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt -Game of the Year Edition also (not automatically marked as owned). Is there any way to do that?

rob006

Quoyque It is not that simple. Not all editions have complete content listed on game card. We're trying to avoid adding separate game cards for stuff like virtual currency or skins packs, if you can't buy them separately. In our database in some cases Deluxe edition contains only base game, since there is no separate "deluxe upgrade pack". In such case marking deluxe edition as owned when you add base game will be incorrect, while it still match "I have everything from this pack" scenario.

ggdealzz

I guess this is the same problem as other sites have, but for the sake of correctness, the following is only valid for Steam; for other platforms, this does not apply.

The public games list just lists appids, which is mostly true, but does not really match up that Steam not licenses "apps"(id) directly, but packages (= subs) which have their own set of unrelated IDs (subs id).

For an example, I use the Alone in the Dark Anthology, which contains Alone in the Dark 1,2,3 and "Alone in the Dark" (= the bad step brother nobody talks about it, but wants to usurp the family name aka part 4).

This is https://store.steampowered.com/sub/135448/ (note that the URL speaks of "sub", not "appid").

SteamDB representation: https://steamdb.info/sub/135448/apps/

According to gg.deals I only own "Alone in the Dark" from it, but not the Anthology, nor 1,2 or 3.

In the global search the situation is like here described (green = owned, red = I should have, orange = game package, should have too).

This is explained if you look at my public Steam games list, where it also only lists both games gg.deals is aware of:

As you can see, there is no mention of the other games, although I own them. A similiar situation is that all these bundles and editions are also "just" packages which do not have a (matching) appid, but a sub id which is not known. Another possibility is that the same game was assigned a new appid altogether which may occur if a game licenses gets a new publisher. The old license hold decides to delist the game and the new publisher has to submit it again and therefore, the game gets a new appid.

How to fix this? There is a JSON object for every Steam user available, located on https://store.steampowered.com/dynamicstore/userdata (you have to be logged into the Steam website for this, afaik, dunno if the current authentication method is enough). This JSON contains - alongside other things - a full list of all subs and appids which the user has licensed.

If we want a more complete and thorough representation here on gg.deals, the package ids (subs) should be integrated.

ggdealzz

I do know that integrating the sub ids into the game database here would be a LOT of work, but I just wanted to point out what would to have to be done to implement it. My description only scratches the surface, you would not only have to rework the frontend logic, but also the backend a big time.

Note that other competitors do the same as this site now, "just" parsing the public games list.

PS: PlayNite has the same problem, but they will do a rework in one of the coming main releases of the client, but this has not really something to do with this site ;D

rob006

ggdealzz We're aware of how packages works on Steam. In fact most of our packages points to Steam "sub", like https://gg.deals/pack/alone-in-the-dark-anthology/. The main problem is that we don't have access to https://store.steampowered.com/dynamicstore/userdata - we would need to log in to your account to see what games you have there.

ggdealzz

Yes, i suspected so.

I guess SteamDB just exploits its SteamDB extensions by harvesting this if a user has it installed and this URL is news only some days, as I was tearing my hair out with this very same problem and not finding an accessible API to get a more correct representation of my licensed games.

For a private project I was tearing my hair out getting exactly this data and how SteamDB does this.. on sites likes this, this is not a dealbreaker, I'm used to it.

ggdealzz

A "workaround" to get access to this data would be providing a display deals on Steam store pages and getting the data in such fashion, but I'd suggest to prominently ask for permission to to do so.

(I'd opt in, if the extension works with PaleMoon or Mozilla SeaMonkey :- ie a traditional XPI addon -- sadly all other browser are now heavily restricted and dumbed down what privacy and customization options are offered)

Quoyque

What if we will be able to import this list manually, as like as here: https://www.steamprices.com/pl/user/ownedgames?import

ggdealzz

Would be neat, if there would be such a manual import option available, I'd definitely use it.
😀

JesusISyourLIFE

This is a feature that needs to be implemented as it does the user experience so much easier.

I understand the difficulty of implementing it as like you @rob006 said, not all editions have complete content listed. I think a good way to implement it and avoid issues is implement an alert. Like, if you mark separate items as owned, check if an edition is completed and alert the user asking something like 'It looks like you own every item on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt -Game of the Year Edition. Would you like to mark it as owned?' and if user accepts mark the edition too.

And for the other way around (marking the edition as owned) on the modal where you select the platform and everything else, have a switch that says 'Mark all edition content as owned'.

I think with this you give the option to the user and not make it mandatory or automatic as it could fail.

Hope to see it implemented soon, and if you need feedback we can help 😀

SirHazza

Currently it's a bit of a headache managing packls/collections. Games that I might own in a pack but I haven't got the individual items marked as owned.

The simple solution is to pop the user a question "It looks like you own every item on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt -Game of the Year Edition. Would you like to mark the collection content as owned?"

But.

Not all games are added manually, most of mine come from syncing to my Steam library.

This could be tackled in two ways.

Add an account option, to automatically add collection content when set as owned.
When the user syncs a collection, a notification is sent (similar to the sync successful notification) asking them the above question.

You also need to consider what happens when a user removes the collection, what happens to all the sub items. That should be more simple, as the user is manually removing it you can ask them the same styled question mention above, but instead "Would you like to mark the collection content as unowned?""