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Steam artwork from SteamGridDB

A game put in Steam (by the Update Steam of PCSX2 Manager or PPSSPP Manager) has a cover in Steam's library and a banner on its page. A PS2 disc brings no pictures in Steam's shapes, so PCSX2 Manager draws them from its icon with the game's title; a PSP game carries its own icon and background, from which PPSSPP Manager draws them. With a SteamGridDB API key of your own, Update Steam looks each game up on SteamGridDB by its title and takes the pictures with the most votes instead: all of them in PCSX2 Manager, the cover in PPSSPP Manager (the game's own pictures stay for the rest).

The key

The key is free. To get one:

  1. Sign in on SteamGridDB and open Preferences in your account.
  2. Click the API tab at the top.
  3. On the API page, click Generate API Key.
  4. Copy the key.

Signed in, the API page is also at steamgriddb.com/profile/preferences/api.

Copy it in a browser on the device, then in PCSX2 Manager or PPSSPP Manager press Steam artwork on the Your games pane:

  • X Paste puts the copied key in the field; a tap on the field lets you type it instead.
  • R3 with the keyboard symbol (the right stick pressed) opens Windows' touch keyboard to type it; R3 again closes it.
  • A Save keeps it. Y Remove key takes it out again, on a second press.
  • B goes back without saving.

It is one key for the whole suite: the other apps use it too. It is kept in %APPDATA%\windows-portable-suite\steamgriddb-key, in your own user folder, and is sent only to SteamGridDB. Leave it empty, or remove it, to look nothing up; the pictures found before stay in use.

How a game is looked up

The next Update Steam looks up each game marked for Steam by its title, without tags such as (USA) or [!] from a file name. It takes the game with exactly that name, else the first one SteamGridDB finds, and of each picture the one with the most votes, leaving out pictures marked as adult, humor or epilepsy. A picture SteamGridDB does not have stays drawn.

SteamGridDB's pictures are made by its users. Many redraw the game's art in Steam's style; few look like the box of the console version, and a smaller game may have none. A game with a title that is not its name, or a name shared with another game, may get the other game's pictures.

Your own pictures

The app looks up a game once and keeps what it found in its covers folder, %LOCALAPPDATA%\windows-portable-suite\windows-portable-pcsx2\covers\ (PPSSPP Manager's in windows-portable-ppsspp\covers\), so a later change to Steam takes the same pictures, also offline. A picture you put there in place of one, under the same name, is taken the same way.