(UPDATE: the site is back online for now. I'm looking into making sure this doesn't happen again.)

It's been a few days since Lestrade's went offline, and I just wanted to address it.

As you may know, the website is being hosted graciously on Devotee's private server, and has regularly been plagued by SSL certificate expiration issues. I've always had trouble getting in touch with him, but he always fixed them eventually. Lestrade's is a pet project of mine, and requires a bit more horsepower than my current hosting plans afford, so I was pretty much stuck with it.

A slow website is better than no website at all though, so once I hear back from Devotee and get access to the database (if I ever do, fingers crossed!), I'll probably move the website over to my own plan, or if someone would like to step up and offer their help, please do!

I really hope this isn't the end. I have no idea whether or not the database can still be accessed in the future. I know LT's hasn't been a successful trading website, but over the years I turned it into a game library management tool that's been very efficient, very user-experience focused. I don't see myself coming back to the 'old' days of not having it at all.

What about you?

Here's the changelog for this week's addition to Lestrade's.
And by "this week", I mean "the last four months", of course.

I'm not going to do a properly sorted list. Just going to keep the list short & easy to read. Seriously, it's 4 months worth of changes, and given the length of this post, it's a good read overall.

- Matches are now sorted by user activity. First resultats shown are from users who recently visited the site.

You can also now quickly view matches with someone even if they're in your skip list -- without having to unskip and then skip them again.

- Finally implemented a mutual Cancel option for botched trades. This was by far the most requested feature on the site (and didn't take long to implement. Okay. That's life.)

- Offer creation page now lists everyone's tradables, regardless of status, with a label indicating said status if it's special. You can use the 'Clean list' link to move back to the original item list.

- Delisted status is now clearer. If a game is banned (i.e. farmed cards can't be resold), it'll clearly be pointed out. And things like that.

- Can now search bundles and studios by name (including expired ones).
Can search for junk items (things that aren't returned in the default results, usually because they're misleading or not redeemable.)

- Added a LOT of search options. I didn't document them properly, but you can read the next few posts here[lestrades.com] if you're interested. Also there[lestrades.com].

- You can now browse all games at the /games/ URL.

- Everywhere on the site, games in your library, tradables, wishlist or blacklist will now be adorned with an icon. It's surprisingly handy.

- Sidebar is now properly moved to the bottom of the page when viewing a heavy page, or using a mobile phone.

- Site icons were simplified to use Unicode everywhere I could, resulting in lighter pages. Also looks much better on Windows but unfortunately most smartphones will render them in an ugly emoji. I'd suggest replacing your emoji font with a black & white one. I can help you with tutorials, if you like. It's much better and that applies to all apps and websites, too.

- Day mode is now looking great again, on par with Night mode.

- Well, mostly I've been busy keeping up with database changes... That's just maintenance work. Updating scrapers from all providers, things like that.
I also created multiple app types in addition to videos -- series and episodes are now their own thing. Most of the shows were handled manually. In fact I had so many changes to do, it kinda killed the fun for me.
In just under a year, the game database size more than doubled. This is just crazy. Thank you Steam Direct (but no thanks), and also many thanks to Steam's policy of allowing many more TV shows on their store. I personally don't know of anyone who's ever bought a TV show on Steam. I do, however, know someone who spent many hours manually flagging episodes. Oh yeah tnad that's me of course.

- And, as always, tons of minor bug fixes.

See you next year or something for the next changelog. ;)

A bit over a month since my last update, so I'm overdue for this list...
As usual with me, I'm trying to list the most popular/interesting new features first, in case you're going to fall asleep before the end. Don't do that okay? Please.


- Added Bulk Add support to Blacklist: you can now add 'Not Interested' games from Steam to your blacklist!

- Added Bulk Add support to Library: can now add DLCs and Steam packages automatically to your library!

Overall, this new feature allowed me to painlessly import 800 DLCs and packages to my library, and 160 items to my blacklist. Just like that!


https://lestrades.com/studios/ has a list of all studios that developed or published a game. For each of them, you can view all of the games they created, as well as statistics on how many of their games were bundled, and when was the last time they had a game bundled.

This makes it VERY helpful to determine if a new game should be bought on sale or if you should wait more: just check out the publisher and their bundling patterns! You can find a semi-tutorial here[lestrades.com].


- The site now shows you the current Steam price of a game in game lists and offers. If the current price is lower than usual, the sale percentage will also be shown in green. (This should, among other things, fix a problem I often met in offers: getting offered a 1:50 game that actually costs $1 on Steam, in exchange for a tier 2 with a much worse ratio. Be strong, resist!)


- Game tags now show short descriptions for confusing tags. I wrote them myself and I'm not much of a player, so apologies for any approximations.

- Game pages now split tags in different categories: genre, sub-genre (in italics), user-assigned tags, and other tags, which usually describe the features of a game rather than its contents. Believe me, it changes everything.

- In bundle and offer pages, if a game is confirmed to be a VR exclusive (i.e. won't run without a VR headset), it will now be indicated with a clear little 'VR ONLY' icon.

- Added a 'sort by latest added' option in the Tag page. This'll allow you to easily spot newly released games for any genre you enjoy.


- If when looking at an offer, you see "1 👫" next to a game entry, it means that tradable is currently in an active offer elsewhere. This shouldn't be a very important detail, but if you're seeing a high number for it, it means the item is likely to get traded soon, meaning that offer will need some reworking/canceling. This should encourage you to accept it as quickly as possible if you want the item in question, of course.

- Fixed 'missing tradable' errors in offer lists where the third party removed one of the offered games from their tradables by mistake and immediately re-added it.


- If a game was added to a bundle before it was on Steam, once it gets added to Steam, it should automatically show the old bundle listed in its game page, as an 'unconfirmed' item (i.e. possibly greenlit but no guaranteed keys.)

- If a game in your library is flagged as 'removed', click its name and visit its page. If it's marked as '(removed)' then it was probably revoked. If it's marked as '(delisted)', it means it was probably recently banned from the store by Steam (i.e. removed, trading disabled and author ridiculed.) Games that were removed a while ago are usually marked as 'Steam Delisted', so this is only useful for recent bans.


- Fixed the game database, notably videos and DLCs which were usually incorrectly marked as games -- about 3000 of them, most done manually! There are probably more left, but not much in the case of videos. Also started turning 'incorrect' games (such as test builds, corrupt DLCs, etc.) into junk, i.e. stuff that isn't returned by the search engine, to save you some time. If you find something that should be removed, you can comment on it and I'll delete it, it's just a single click for me. Okay, two.


- Search engine results will now indicate the item's ratio, store (Steam/GOG/etc.) and decommissioned status. This should make it easier to choose the 'proper' game when several results come up.

- Comments on offers, bundles etc. can now hold up to a thousand characters instead of the very arbitrary 250. You're only limited by the fact that you're typing in an input box, not a textarea, so it shouldn't encourage you to start talking about your life. Not that we don't care, but it's probably not the place for that.

And... as always, many minor changes, additions and fixes that I didn't deem important enough to be mentioned here. (And don't mind the title, I just watched Mr. Robot this morning.)

Meanwhile at Lestrade's... Is it future, or is it past? Sorry, I'm trying to burn through all of my cool Twin Peaks quotes because the show ended a month ago and it'll get old quick. (Kudos to anyone who understands this post's title/pun, too.)

- Improved homepage by showing icons on commented bundles, and most importantly, adding a new section showing you the latest tradables added to the site. You can choose to ignore games that are in current bundles. Wishlisted items are shown in bold. There's also a 'cheat mode' to prevent showing non-wishlisted items, but shh! I'll probably have it as a setting in the future.

- Creating offers is now much faster! Instead of waiting for all lists to reload when you select games and click the 'Preview' button, LT will now load the changes through Ajax, meaning it's near-instantaneous on any user page, including those with huge tradable lists like Mac or Devotee.

- A long requested feature was introduced last month: a 'Skip' button next to user names in your Matches page. What it does is simply fold mutual results with that user by default, as if they were inactive. This is NOT an 'Ignore user' feature, meaning you can still send them offers, they can still offer you offers, all it does is make their matches less prominent -- for instance, if a user only has one crappy tradable you want, but all they want is inappropriate for a trade (like, all of your most valuable tradables), then you might as well skip their results and just check their matches from time to time to see if they added something more common to their wishlist.
Why no 'Ignore'? Because I don't believe in ignoring people unless they've been really naughty (in which case you can always post a topic about them to ask for a ban.)
Peace on Earth, man.

- A cool feature: when you receive game keys through PM (personal messages) at Lestrade's, Steam links will be shown next to them that allow you to activate them on Steam without using the client. Yes, you can now trade from work. (This is a new Steam thing that was silently added a month ago, see HB for an example.) (Also, it's not only on PMs it's anywhere really, so if you wanted to post a key on the forum, well, that'd show up as well.)

- Speaking about PMs, they're now shown as individual conversations. It just makes more sense when you get 'repeat' traders in your mail. Plus it's simply more natural in 2017.

- Older completed offers can now show up in offer lists -- the limit is now 50 old offers, rather than last week's offers. This'll make it more useful if you're not very active.

- And as usual, many new minor additions, minor fixes, and manual fixes to problematic games and bundles.

I'll see you in 25 days. Oh, okay, enough with the TP quotes!

Okay guys & gals, vacation's over, time to trade again!

I have yet to take any time off this year, continuing my trend of adding features on a mostly daily basis. Just me, my keyboard and my weekly dose of damn fine Twin Peaks.

As usual when I take some time to write these posts, if anything's in bold letters, then it's probably a community-pleasing feature.


- If a game was bundled as part of a package, the package's name will be shown alongside the bundle name. For better service, I've also made sure to show the package colored by its ratio (similar to what you can see on Match pages.) This is in case a game's package is more common than the game itself.

- The related items section now indicates ratios for each entry. This is very useful if you're looking at a rare game and it's included in a package that's been bundled a lot. (Yes, this happens more than you'd think. Just look at https://lestrades.com/game/1716/ for a random example.)

- $0 (massively given away) games are back to being updated on a daily basis.

- Trading card additions are now automated, a few times per hour. Card data is no longer retrieved from BVG, and should be a bit more accurate. Also fixed 684 previously added games that incorrectly showed 'no cards'.

- Fixed a problem with users following a link to LT's game pages and being redirected to the home page instead. (Only happened for a couple weeks and only when coming to the site for the first time or with cookies disabled.)

- The previously useless 'Completed trades' statistic on game pages will now list all of these completed offers, along with their completion date. This is more interesting, it allows you to determine a game's trading popularity over time, as well as what kind of value it's usually traded against.

- Game pages should now be more consistent in layout (list of bundles wasn't using the proper section background.)


- A popular request -- increased maximum custom note length for tradables to 50 chars (instead of 30) for regular users, and 255 (max length) for premium users. I'm not currently adapting it for proper viewing (i.e. adding a pop-up with full text when it's beyond 30 chars), but it'll come later.

- New trading tags for tradables (not wishlists): 'unbundled only'. It's, as expected, the exact opposite of a wishlist-only 'bundled only' tag, i.e. you're not going to trade this game for bundled games (well, maybe you'll take 20 rare bundled games but you see what I mean.) This is obviously for games that are so valuable that even the 'high tier' tag doesn't mean much. I'd recommend setting a custom value on games like these, but if you really want to trade them for other games, this tag should be helpful.

- New tag, wishlist-only 'filler', which is for wishlist fillers; this is something I do all the time, basically stuff I apply a 'low tier' tag on: games that I don't really intend to ever play, but they're 'in my radar' and I wouldn't mind the +1. So if I find a 1:1 trade where I feel like I'm giving away the better value, I can add a wishlist filler to build a more balanced 1:2.


- Lestrade's is now even smarter in warning you about potential conflicts with other ongoing trades in the offer list.

- You can now sort items by ratio rather than alphabetical order. Good if you get a 1:1 offer with lots of games in it.


- Main bundle page lists number of games per bundle (and adapts properly if no games are found, or even just one, because it doesn't have to show average ratios for those). Bundle list handling is also faster internally.

- Added infamous Steamground permanent bundle. I'm not going to update the game list daily or whatever... Just post to the bundle if you find out new games were added or deleted. That thing is just madness... But then again, a few cents per key-- this needs to be made prominent.

- Fixed (mostly greenlight-type) bundles that had 'no Steam key' games attached when those games actually got a Steam key after that. I had to do those manually, so I stopped at around 7 months in the past. It wasn't fun. Feel free to post on any game or bundle page to indicate any further fixes to do.

- Bundles that have expired within the last week are now shown on the main bundle list, grayed out, at the end of the page. This is mostly so you can quickly scan if you missed a bundle, or at least can easily access a bundle marked as expired that actually isn't expired yet for a reason or another (e.g. last-minute extension.)


- Fixed PM feature in mobile browsers, making messages at last readable.

- The requested/offered section now shows 5 requested and 5 offers, instead of 3 & 2 (I never made it clear it was 3 & 2, so here we go.)
Also, the games now take the number of *different* traders into account. It will no longer show games that are only requested by a single user to many others. Because this makes it harder to find games that stand out then, the stat will now be for the last month, rather than the last week.

- And as always, many minor fixes & features that I either documented on the 'What's new' topic, or didn't document at all.