Yandex now takes information about games from the RAWG database

Cards with descriptions of video games that Yandex generates in its search results are now formed, including with the help of RAWG (more precisely, its Russian—language version – AG.RU ).

The card on the right is now being formed with the support of RAWG
Previously, the search service pulled up data (name, description) mainly from the Russian-language version of Wikipedia.

However, Wikipedia has a relatively small pool of video game descriptions in Russian. The section “Computer games alphabetically” mentions only 6800 titles. For comparison, only on Steam the number of games in 2019 reached 34 thousand.

If you want to increase the number of descriptions, the search engine would have to take up active integration with gaming platforms. This is a long and resource-intensive process.

RAWG offered an alternative solution, which satisfied Yandex. The startup provided the search engine with an API to its database, which contains 350 thousand games, 40 thousand of which are in Russian.

Thanks to the agreement, part of the game data that the Yandex user receives from the card in the search results is now provided by RAWG. In addition to the basic description, we are talking about an assessment with Metacritic, information about the year of publication, publisher, developer, and so on.

It says that the partnership is non-commercial. What exactly RAWG gets from the deal is still unclear. Links to the service itself are not given in the game cards. Therefore, there is no way to talk about what happened as a traffic case.

RAWG is positioned as a gaming database and recommendation service, a gaming analog of IMDb. It was launched three years ago by the current owner of Kanobu and Igromania, Haji Mahtieva. The Russian—language version of the service is AG.RU — launched in 2019.

In 2018, it was also about launching its own blockchain on its basis. However, today Maktiyev speaks of this initiative as a mistake.

At the moment, the founder of the service is primarily focused on distributing the API of the service. In addition to Yandex, RAWG data is often used by bots — for Reddit, Discord, Telegram and DTF publications.

Also on the topic:

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• Kanobu founder’s service attracted €1 million from Igor Matsanyuk, Mikhail Lyalin and Wargaming