spiritedusual

PC Game Scraper
A comprehensive LaunchBox plugin designed to scrape metadata, images, videos, and completion times from Steam, SteamGridDB, YouTube, and HowLongToBeat.
📖 Overview
PC Game Scraper is a plugin that automates the process of filling in metadata and downloading images and videos. It is designed to work for games that have not been imported from a specific digital storefront.
✨ Features
Metadata Scraping
Fetches Developer, Publisher, Release Date, Genres, Rating, Controller Support, and Descriptions directly from the Steam Store.
Media Downloading
Images: Downloads Box Art, Clear Logos, Fanart, and Screenshots from Steam or SteamGridDB.
Videos: Downloads Trailers or Gameplay videos using yt-dlp via Steam or YouTube. Supports FFmpeg and WMC codecs (up to 4K resolution).
HowLongToBeat (HLTB) Integration
Scrapes game completion times and categorizes game length automatically.
Custom Fields Created:
HLTB - Main Story
HLTB - Main + Extra
HLTB - Completionist
Length Category (e.g., "Extended (15-30h)", "Massive (60h+)")
Smart Safety: Uses randomized "humanized" delays and smart retry logic to prevent IP flagging while ensuring data accuracy.
Multiple Scan Modes
Automated: Auto-matches Steam AppIDs based on game title. If the game is not on Steam, it falls back to SteamGridDB (SGDB).
SteamGridDB: Skips Steam entirely and searches SteamGridDB directly (requires API Key).
Manual: Allows user input of specific AppIDs or Store URLs.
Smart Matching
Uses a similarity algorithm combined with exact match logic to detect the correct game, even if the title in your library is not an exact match to the store title.
🛠️ Prerequisites
To use this plugin, you must download the following external tools and place them in the plugin folder:
yt-dlp.exe (Required for video downloading)
ffmpeg.exe (Required for video processing)
FlareSolverr (Required for HLTB Scraping)
HLTB uses Cloudflare protection. You must have a running instance of FlareSolverr (usually running on http://localhost:8191) to bypass this protection.
**WARNING**
HLTB does not have a public api and uses cloudflare to prevent people form doing exactly what we're doing. I used the plugin on over 800 games and did not have an issue. However if you find that you're getting a lot of errors and when accessing HLTB and when accessing the site with your browser you get a captcha screen it is probably time to rotate your IP. 
 
🚀 Installation
Extract the plugin archive to your LaunchBox Plugins folder.
Download the latest release of yt-dlp.exe and place it in the plugin folder.
Download the latest version of FFmpeg (Essentials build). Locate ffmpeg.exe inside the bin folder of the download and extract it to the plugin folder.
Verify that the plugin folder contains the .dll file, yt-dlp.exe, and ffmpeg.exe.
Download flaresolverr and run.  If on windows a command prompt will open. When it is running you will see some success messages with 0.0.0.0:8191.
💻 Usage
Open LaunchBox.
Select one or multiple games.
Right-click and select PC Game Scraper.
Configure your settings in the popup menu.
⚙️ Configuration Options
Scan Mode
Choose between Automated, SteamGridDB, or Manual search.
Automated Mode: Depending on your settings, this will automatically scan Steam or SGDB by title.
If a Steam match is found, the plugin fills missing metadata and downloads Box Art, Fanart, Screenshots, and Video (if enabled).
If images are missing or do not match standard Steam resolutions, the plugin falls back to SGDB using the SteamID.
If the title is not on Steam, you will be prompted to fall back to SGDB for images.
Matching Logic: A game title must match 100% or be at least 93% similar to match without user input.
HowLongToBeat Options
Enable scraping of completion times.
FlareSolverr URL: Enter the address of your running FlareSolverr instance (e.g., http://localhost:8191).
The plugin pings your flaresolverr address to ensure it is correct before proceeding. 
Overwrite HLTB Data: If unchecked, the plugin will skip games that already have HLTB fields populated. Check this to force an update.
Manual Search Fallback: If a game isn't found (e.g., "Disco Elysium - The Final Cut" vs "Disco Elysium"), the plugin will prompt you to enter a manual search term or stop the batch.
Due to the nature of HLTB cloudflare protection this step will take the longest and may fail on some titles. Make sure your titles match HLTB or you are entering the correct title into the manual search bar when prompted. If it fails try again and check the log.
Image Source
Prioritize "Steam (Official)" or "SteamGridDB (Community)."
Box Art: Restricted to aspect ratios between 0.6 and 0.75. When a game is not on Steam, it is possible the highest-rated box art will be 660x930. The logic ensures you get the best-rated image within a reasonable range.
Fanart: Downloads up to 4K resolution as long as it matches the correct aspect ratio.
Overwriting and Mark Installed
Default Behavior: The plugin only fills empty metadata fields. If you have already populated fields using the LaunchBox Database, the plugin will skip them.
Overwrite: Select the corresponding overwrite options to replace existing data with Steam, SGDB, or YouTube data.
Mark Installed: Marks the selected games as "Installed" in LaunchBox.
Video Options
Enable video downloads, select the source (Steam/YouTube), and set the resolution (480p - 4K).
Engine Selection:
FFmpeg: Select this if LaunchBox does not crash and videos play using FFmpeg as the video playback engine. It supports modern codecs providing high video quality with significantly smaller file sizes.
WMC: Use this for legacy compatibility if FFmpeg causes playback issues. It is the most compatible option.
⚠️ YouTube Download Warning: yt-dlp cannot download age-restricted trailers without authentication, and YouTube may block automated requests. If you see errors in the log asking for sign-in:
Extract your cookies file from your browser.
Place the file in the plugin folder (named cookies.txt).
The plugin will automatically use this file to pass verification.
SGDB API Key
Required to download community art from SteamGridDB. You can generate an API key in your profile section on the SteamGridDB website.
📂 File Locations
Logs: LaunchBox/Plugins/PCGameScraper/PCGameScraper.log
Config: LaunchBox/Plugins/PCGameScraper/config.json
Downloaded Media: Files are saved directly into the plugin folder under Images/ and Videos/.
Please reach out if you have questions! I plan on trying to implement IGDB support later and if anyone has suggestions or finds a bug please reach out.
Special thanks:
srxz, for developing the original steam scraper your plugin saved me lots of time and was the major inspiration for this plugin.
maikeru1986, for creating the vidsnap scraper which again saved me lots of time getting videos and was the major inspiration for the video download portion of the plugin (I basically ripped off your menu sorry)
JOEVIKING245: a god among moderators and who seems to have INFINITE PATIENCE. Seriously this person needs more credit!
7nseccmem: for helping test the features on discord
Finally Google's Gemini which wrote the whole thing. It was a team effort I promise! If you don't believe me you go try and get Gemini to do something similar see how easy it is.
 

I've created a controller support theme video using Vikings colorful windows theme and a youtube video, History of Game Controllers. 
Thanks go to them for those resources.

Simply, this is the only recently played icon on the forum added on to the oval tiles to match the format of pawpaw's clear icon playlist set. This should hopefully help make your set up cleaner.