Linking your games for CLZ Cloud

Linking your games for syncing with CLZ Cloud

Before uploading your games to CLZ Cloud from the Windows or Mac software, you can “link your games”.

Game Collector, CLZ Cloud and Linking

Game Collector is built around our central online database: Core for Games. For the online user databases in CLZ Cloud, all factual game details (description, publisher, developer, etc.) and cover images are used and shown directly from Core for Games.

This factual game data is not stored per user. Instead, it is stored only once, inside Core for Games then linked to for every CLZ Cloud user that owns that game.
This factual data is not uploaded to CLZ Cloud when you sync your data from Game Collector. It only uploads your personal data fields like Collection Status, Purchase information, Notes, Rating, etc…), plus the link to the corresponding game entry in Core for Games (basically just the CLZ Game ID of the entry inside Core for Games).

How to link your games

If you have been using the Add Games Automatically screen to catalog your games, selecting and downloading the data from Core for Games, then most of your games will already be linked.

You will only need to link the games that you added manually.

To link your games, click menu CLZ Core > Batch Link Games and let the program search for your games in the Core for Games. Link whatever you can (no problem if you can’t link a couple).

You can search all of them at once, or check the results and focus on each single game before linking it.

The advantages of the Linking with Core for Games and central shared data in Core for Games

*Automatic Updates: * When our content managers or other users update the game information in Core for Games (e.g. to add a better cover image, to improve data, or to fix a typo), you will immediately see those changes in CLZ Cloud.
No need to “Update Games Automatically”. Your collection in CLZ Cloud always automatically shows the latest version of the data and cover art.

It’s fast: Sharing the factual game data means that its retrieval can be optimized (e.g. by caching), resulting in a smooth experience when browsing your CLZ Cloud game collection. Also, syncing up from your desktop/mobile app v is very fast, because only your personal data and a single ID value needs to be uploaded to your CLZ Cloud.

It’s efficient: Shared factual game data is only stored once, which means our servers are not clogged by duplicate copies of data and images (that are all the same for every user). This also makes it possible for our systems to make daily backups of your game collection data.

What if a game is not in Core for Games?

This shouldn’t happen too often, but here’s what you can do to handle this situation and at the same time help us improve Core for Games:

Good to know: You can upload and keep unlinked games in your CLZ Cloud. Unlinked items will show up online with just some basic information and will include your personal data, including the cover image that you may have added yourself to the unlinked game.

TIP: For games not available in our central database, make sure to include the barcode in your unlinked entry, so that our Content Team can spot popular “un-linked” games and add them to the central database. As soon as they do, your entry will automatically become a full entry with all game information.

Also, if you do have full information for that game you can right click it in your collection and report it to Core to add/make correction in Core for Games.