How the platform works, in the order you are likely to need it.
Create an account, confirm the link we email you, and you have a collection. From there, three ways to add a game:
Everything you add lands in My Library, and you can start from the search page.
A game is the work: "Azul". An edition is a specific published box: the Spanish printing by one publisher, in one year, with its own barcode and its own rulebook.
This distinction is why a barcode scan can tell you which printing you own, why the rules link on an edition page is the right one for the box on your table, and why prices will later be able to point at the exact product rather than at the game in general. Ratings belong to the game; language, components and printing questions belong to the edition.
The scanner reads EAN-13, EAN-8 and UPC-A codes with your camera. Your browser will ask for camera permission, and outside localhost it only works over HTTPS - a browser rule, not ours. You can always type the digits instead.
If a code is not in the catalog yet, we do not leave you stuck: search the game by name and link the code to the right edition. That link is reviewed before it becomes public, and it helps the next person who scans the same box.
Nobody, until you decide otherwise. Everything starts private.
In My Library, under "Privacy: who can see what", you can share the whole collection or just a part of it. Sharing only your wishlist while keeping your shelf private is a normal thing to want, so each part has its own setting. Individual games can also be shared or hidden one by one, which overrides everything else.
Two things are never published by any setting: your private notes, and your photos unless you explicitly turn photos public. And a collection you share with a link is kept out of search engines.
Collections are your own lists - "Party games", "Two-player favourites", "Take to the club" - and a game can be in as many as you like. They are independent of whether you own the game.
Each collection has its own visibility and, when public, its own permanent link you can send to somebody without sharing the rest of your collection.
On the Import and Export page you can download everything you have here, and bring in a collection from a CSV file - including one exported from BoardGameGeek.
Importing always happens in two steps. First we match every row against the catalog and show you the result: ready, needs your choice between several editions, already in your collection, or not found. Nothing is written until you confirm. Rows we cannot match are never guessed - a wrong edition in your shelf is worse than a missing one.
You can rate a game from 1 to 5 stars, with or without writing anything. One rating per game per person: editing replaces it, so the average stays honest.
Comments go on a game, on a specific edition (language, components, printing questions) or as a reply to somebody. Photos are of your own copies, so you need the edition in your collection to upload one, and a short description is required because it is what people using a screen reader will hear.
Before a photo is stored we re-encode it, which removes the camera and location data your phone puts in the file. If that step fails, the photo is not saved at all.
The catalog is built by the people using it. You can add a missing game, suggest a correction, link a barcode to an edition, propose a rulebook link, or report a duplicate.
A game you add is usable in your own collection immediately, and shareable with friends, while it waits for review before joining the public catalog. Every contribution records who made it, what changed, the source you gave and the decision taken - including when we get it wrong and roll it back.
Notifications appear in the app. Email is optional and off by default: you choose between no email, one per event, a daily summary or a weekly summary.
Replies to your comments and reviews can be switched off entirely. Notices about your own account and content - a contribution decided, something of yours moderated - always appear in the app, because you should not have to find that out by accident.
From your account page you can download a copy of your personal data or ask for your account to be deleted. Both are confirmed by email and processed by a person.
We keep what the platform needs to work and nothing more. Login attempts are recorded as a salted hash of the address, never the address itself. Analytics events are pseudonymous and never carry personal data.
Write to us from the support page. If your question is about what is allowed here, read the community guidelines first.