Giant Bomb Video Game News

Have you ever wanted to sink your hooks into a gaming database full of release dates, artwork, games, platforms, and other sorts of related data? I'm going to guess that, for the bulk of you, the answer's probably no.

But if you're out there wondering what to do next with your developer-savvy smarts, you've got another big source to pull data from. The Giant Bomb API is now available for non-commercial use.

What does this mean? It means you can write an application (say, for your iPhone or something) that has full access to our data. Then you could take that data and mash it against a database of local game retailers or something? Or maybe you want to mash our character data against Comic Vine's character data for a huge list of cross-media dudes? Or maybe you want to pull a list of game credits for a set of fan shrines for your favorite developers? OK, those aren't all great idea. But that's part of why we're opening this stuff up to everyone. We're sure that some of you probably have some pretty great ideas, but lack the database required to get going.

Bang. Zap. Pow. Now you've got a database.

The key things to know are that we're offering this data in XML and JSON formats. And it doesn't offer any data specific to our userbase--your privacy as a user of this site is still completely intact. And if you're planning on using it for commercial purposes, you really need to get in touch with us beforehand.

For more information, the full terms of use, and to get your API key, check out api.giantbomb.com. If you're working with our API and are looking for some community support, check out our board for devs.

(And if none of this made any sense to you at all, feel free to go about your business and forget we ever said anything.)