Allow users to contribute Developer/Publisher entries

[arft1kwerg]

Many major but smaller development studios, like Gust, Black Tree Studios, Type-Moon, and many others are completely missing from the drop down menus under submissions. In the current system it is extremely strict with its matching to whatever the drop-down compares to (such as Koei only ever being Koei instead of the full name of the actual developer or publisher when applicable).

It would be best if users could have an option in the submission forms to add missing developer/publisher.

[strycore]

Before allowing users to contribute developer and publishing studios, I'd like to have a better organization for them and also complete our integrations with other systems so this become needed as little as possible.
We used to have publisher/developer sync when we used GOGDB, now with the GOG API, this has yet to be implemented. Same thing for IGDB.
Once those syncs are in place, this should cover a lot more companies.
I'd also like a way to have company aliases, like we have for games so people submitting a company under a different name would have a way to be linked to its real entity.

[slaszt]

I came here after trying to add some games and realizing I can't because the developer/publisher isn't in the database. They're relatively popular/polished indie games from Itch.io, but can't be added for whatever reason.

Unless you are planning to curate a list of every single dev/publisher on the planet and commit to updating it (a full-time job for several people in itself), I don't think this approach will work.

Edit: also consider allowing users to enter genres; I just tried to give a game the "Western" genre but it doesn't exist. I understand that it may not be as popular as "Shooter" or "Strategy," but off the top of my head there are several of them: the Call of Juarez series, GUN, Red Dead Redemption 2, Turmoil, etc.

I also simply believe that niche genres such as Western are, as a whole, very helpful/descriptive to players and should be added.

[strycore]

We pull existing developers and publishers from automated pipelines that import from GOG, IGDB, etc... I feel like opening this data to the public would result to have someone to delete all the typos, duplicates and otherwise unwanted data submitted by the users, which is just as much a full time job as maintaining existing publishers.