When Good Software Goes Bad

For a couple of years now I have been using Game Collector to organize my games collection. This small bit of software was a little pricy, but it's ability to import data about a game from online sources made it a lot easier to use than simply making my own. Sure, I couldn't add many new fields, but most of the important stuff was there. My own Access or Filemaker database would have worked fine, but I had neither the time nor the desire to make my own. I would have ended up manually inputting tons of information on my hundreds of games. It's not the best piece of collection software out there, but it is easy to use and has access to all this online information to make my inputting easier.

Well, it used to.

A few months ago, the program developers were told to stop using the online database of All Games Guide as a source. It is still not clear to me if Collectorz Software ever had permission to use the AGG database in the first place (it is an excellent resource, by the way). Apparently, Game Collector used to have access to Mobygames, but were told to stop using that, too.

Automation was the entire reason for me buying this software to begin with. Now the only online source available through the program is Amazon - a rather poor choice for a game collector. All the info has to be entered manually now.

Since I don't get more than three or four new pieces of software every month, manual input is not a huge deal at this point. Many of my games are indie titles that AGG didn't have data for anyway. But can you imagine my fury if I had bought this software immediately before the relationship with AGG had ended? The website still advertises that it can access online databases for collection information, but this isn't really true.

There is now talk of Collectorz Software maintaining its own database of game information. Until they do - or can work out a relationship with a major online database - I won't be recommending it to anyone.