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I never thought this day would come, but with all the great indie bundles, gog.com, Steam, Desura and whatnot I managed to amass too many games to actually remember whether I already bought a certain one on another site when I see a great offer / bundle... So yes, this is the real disadvantage of the digital age, no more boxes which you remember already having in your shelve (also, you'd probably throw some away every now and then).

Steam has that nice property of showing you which games you already own on Steam so you can't accidentally buy the twice (except as gifts), but for some games I own another license. So, how to keep an overview? How to avoid wasting money for an apparently great offer which actually wouldn't buy something new?

Is there a one-for-all game management program?

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5  
Excel spreadsheet? – Sorean Jun 5 '12 at 21:12
@Sorean +1 :-P unfortunately my best guess so far, too... I'd prefer something more comfortable like keeping track of download locations (clickable) and installation status (startable if installed) without too much copy/pasting – Zommuter Jun 5 '12 at 21:13
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A priest should be able to help you with your possessed games. – Nick T Jun 5 '12 at 21:54
@NickT +1, that was my exact reaction when I saw the title. Call the ghostbusters!! – deutschZuid Jun 5 '12 at 23:37
Seriously though, Zommuter, I'd use an easily accessible spreadsheet program like Google Spreadsheet. Manual editing is unavoidable at this stage (this might change in the future, who knows). – deutschZuid Jun 5 '12 at 23:40

closed as off topic by StrixVaria, Nick T, BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft, Sorean, kotekzot Jun 5 '12 at 22:20

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3 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

If you really like the steam interface, just add your non-steam games to steam.

Howto: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=2219-YDJV-5557

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That's not exactly what I want to do - not every game I own e.g. on gog.com is actually installed, so the others wouldn't show up. I'd also prefer a solution independent of Steam, I only mentioned that because the displayed "You already own this game" in their shop is helpful. Another program modifying multiple online shops to cross-sale-platform indicate this would be nice... – Zommuter Jun 5 '12 at 21:38
@Zommuter: So what you really want is a database application to manage status (installed/own/want) and launch games, while also interfacing with gog.com and Steam. I'm sure someone at stackoverflow can answer those questions. – MBraedley Jun 5 '12 at 21:55
@MBraedley indeed. SO might be the place to look for how to implement this since apparently no solution yet exists... I was looking for a reason to use github anyway :-7 – Zommuter Jun 6 '12 at 18:53
up vote 1 down vote

Every one of those places sends you an email when you buy a game.

I have a filter in gmail that automatically tags an email when I buy from any one of them; then I can just go back and search by tag.

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That's probably the most helpful way so far, thanks – Zommuter Jun 6 '12 at 18:54
up vote 0 down vote

I suggest just making a list and if you are unsure just check your list.

Extra tip: If you can program make a web page with the names an image of the games for easy reference.

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You don't need to be a programmer to make a web page (but it helps). – kotekzot Jun 5 '12 at 22:19

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