Discord Game Price Bot

A Discord bot for your server. Type !watch GAME NAME in any channel to start tracking a PC game's price, !remove GAME NAME (or !unwatch GAME NAME) to stop, !list to see what is being watched, !price GAME NAME to check a price without watching it, !history GAME NAME to see every recorded sale over the past 12 months with date and price, !predict GAME NAME to guess when it might go on sale next, !info GAME NAME to see its platforms, multiplayer/co-op/cross-play info, a link to its store page, and how many people on the server own it, !own GAME NAME to mark a game as owned by you, !unown GAME NAME to remove it from your owned list, !my-steam-profile LINK to link your Steam profile so !info can count you automatically, !bulk-link to link several members' Steam profiles at once if you already have them, !who GAME NAME to list who has confirmed they own a game, !check to run the sale check on demand, !shops to see which stores it covers. Once a day it checks the best current price across PC stores for everything watched and posts in the channel it was added from when something is on sale, with the title, sale price, and which store it is at.

Mention the bot's trigger word anywhere in a message (that doesn't start with !) and, if Ollama is installed and running (and AI_ENABLED isn't turned off), it thinks up a short, in-character answer to whatever you said using a free AI model running right on your own computer - no API key, no cost, nothing sent anywhere over the internet. Without Ollama running (or with AI_ENABLED=false), it doesn't reply to mentions at all. It never fires on ! commands, even ones that happen to contain the trigger word. The bot's name, trigger word, and personality are entirely up to you - edit personality.yaml to set them (see Notes); it ships pre-filled as BMO from Adventure Time as an example.

When someone new joins the server, it posts a random greeting from greetings.yaml in your #general channel. When someone leaves, it posts a random goodbye from goodbyes.yaml there too.

It runs as a background service on a computer you leave on (a Mac, Linux box, or Windows PC all work), since a bot that reacts to typed commands has to stay connected to Discord all the time. There is no website and no cloud hosting involved.

Setup

1. Create the Discord bot

1. Go to discord.com/developers/applications and click New Application. Name it whatever you like.
2. Go to the Bot tab, click Add Bot.
3. Under Privileged Gateway Intents, turn on "Message Content Intent" (required to read !watch style commands) and "Server Members Intent" (required to detect when someone joins and send a greeting). Click Save Changes.
4. Click Reset Token, copy it. This is your DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN, keep it secret.
5. Go to OAuth2 > URL Generator, check the "bot" scope, then under Bot Permissions check "Send Messages" and "Read Message History". A URL appears at the bottom of the page.
6. This step is required and easy to miss: copy that URL, paste it into your browser, press Enter, pick your server, and click Authorize. Creating the bot in steps 1 to 5 does not add it to your server, it only exists in the developer portal until you do this.

2. Get a free IsThereAnyDeal API key

Register a free account at isthereanydeal.com, then go to isthereanydeal.com/apps/ and click Register App to get a key. Free, instant, no card needed. This is your ITAD_API_KEY.

3. Get a free Steam Web API key (optional)

Only needed if you want !my-steam-profile and automatic Steam ownership counts on !info. Go to steamcommunity.com/dev/apikey, sign in, enter any domain name (e.g. localhost), and submit. This is your STEAM_API_KEY. You can skip this during setup and add it to .env later if you change your mind.

4. Install Ollama for the bot's AI answers (optional, free)

Only needed for the bot to give smart, made-up-on-the-spot answers when asked a question in chat - completely free, since it runs a small AI model locally instead of calling a paid cloud API. The installer in the next step will offer to install Ollama for you and download the model, so you can skip this step and let it handle everything. If you'd rather do it yourself first, download it from ollama.com/download. Skip this entirely if you don't want the bot replying to chat mentions at all - you can always set it up later and just run the installer again.

5. Install and run it

Works the same way on macOS, Linux, and Windows - a background process manager called pm2 keeps the bot running and automatically restarts it if it ever crashes or the computer reboots.

You need Node.js installed first (18 or newer). On macOS or Linux with Homebrew, or on Windows with winget, the installer will offer to install it for you.

On macOS or Linux, in Terminal:

cd discord-game-price-bot
bash install.sh

On Windows, in PowerShell:

cd discord-game-price-bot
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File install.ps1

Either way, it will ask for your Discord bot token, your IsThereAnyDeal key, and (optionally) your Steam Web API key the first time (nothing is shown or saved anywhere except your local .env file), offer to install Ollama and download its AI model if you don't have it yet, install dependencies, and set the bot up as a background service that starts on login/boot and restarts itself if it ever crashes. That is the whole setup.

In your Discord server, try !watch Hades and !list to confirm it is working.

Logs go to bot.log and bot.error.log inside the project folder, useful if a command does not seem to be working. pm2 logs discord-game-price-bot shows the same thing live in the terminal, and pm2 status shows whether it's currently running.

To stop the bot:

pm2 stop discord-game-price-bot

To change the token or key later, edit .env directly, then run the installer again (bash install.sh or the PowerShell command above) to restart it with the new values. Re-running it any time (for example after editing index.js) is safe, it just reinstalls and restarts the service.

Notes

• Price data comes from IsThereAnyDeal, which covers Steam, GOG, Epic, Humble, Fanatical, and most other PC stores. !watch and the daily check always pick whichever store currently has the lowest price, and every price shown says which store it is at. Type !shops to see the live, current list of every store it checks.
• !watch matches the top search result for whatever you typed, and tells you what it matched so you can catch a wrong pick early.
• The daily check runs at 8am Arizona time. To change it, edit the cron.schedule("0 15 * * *", ...) line in index.js (that time is in UTC).
• The daily check only alerts once per discount level per game. If the price drops further while still on sale, you get a new alert. If it goes back to full price and later goes on sale again, that is a new alert too.
• Everything watched is stored in games.json in this folder, in plain text, so you can also open it directly if you ever want to see or edit the list by hand.
• games.json, owned.json, steamlinks.json, and .env hold your server's actual data and are left out of git (.gitignore) so they never end up in a public repo by accident. The installer creates the three JSON files from their .json.example templates automatically if they don't exist yet.
• The installer manages the bot with pm2, so once it's set up you can check on it with plain pm2 commands any time: pm2 status (is it running), pm2 logs discord-game-price-bot (live logs), pm2 restart discord-game-price-bot, pm2 stop discord-game-price-bot, and pm2 delete discord-game-price-bot (remove it from pm2 entirely - re-run the installer to add it back).
• If you're upgrading from an older version of this bot that used launchd directly on macOS, install.sh detects and automatically removes that old service the first time you run it, so you don't end up with two copies of the bot running and double-replying in Discord.
• To add, remove, or change greetings, edit greetings.yaml. Use {user} anywhere in a greeting and it gets replaced with a mention of the person who joined.
• Same for goodbyes: edit goodbyes.yaml. Use {user} there too, it gets replaced with the username of whoever left (a plain name, not a mention, since Discord can't ping someone no longer in the server).
• The join greeting posts to whichever channel is named general in your server. To use a different channel, change GREETING_CHANNEL_NAME near the top of index.js to that channel's name (no #) and restart it (re-run the installer, or pm2 restart discord-game-price-bot). If no channel with that name exists, nothing posts and bot.error.log will note it.
• !info gets platforms and Multiplayer/Co-Op/Cross-Play from that game's Steam store page when it has one. For non-Steam games (GOG/Epic exclusives etc.) there is no such lookup available, so "not listed" there means "couldn't confirm it," not "definitely single-player only."
• The ownership count on !info combines two sources: anyone who ran !own for that game, plus anyone who linked their Steam profile with !my-steam-profile and actually owns it there. Discord itself has no concept of game ownership, so there is no fully automatic way to get this - !own needs people to mark their own games by hand, and !my-steam-profile only auto-detects Steam copies (not GOG/Epic) and only if that person's Steam profile has "game details" set to public. Everything self-reported through !own is stored in owned.json; Steam profile links are stored in steamlinks.json, both in this folder, in plain text.
• If you don't want to make each person run !my-steam-profile themselves, there are two ways to link them yourself:
  • From the terminal (the easiest way if you already know your server members as Steam friends): run bash install.sh --link-steam-profiles (macOS/Linux) or powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File install.ps1 -LinkSteamProfiles (Windows). The first time, it asks for your own Steam profile once (to read your friends list from - it needs your Steam friends list privacy set to public, and remembers your profile after that so it won't ask again). Then it lists your Discord server's members for you to pick one by number, lists your Steam friends for you to pick one by number, links them, and asks if you want to link another (defaults to no). This does not restart the bot, so there is no need to run the installer again afterward.
  • From Discord, use !bulk-link instead: type !bulk-link, then on the following lines list one real @mention and Steam profile URL per line, like:

    !bulk-link
    @Alex https://steamcommunity.com/id/alexname
    @Sam https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198012345678
    

    Each @mention has to actually be picked from Discord's autocomplete popup while typing (so it turns into a real link, shown highlighted) - plain typed text like @Alex that was never selected from that popup will not be recognized, and that line will be skipped. It replies back with who it managed to link and which lines it could not, so you can fix and re-run just those.
• The bot only replies to mentions of its trigger word if Ollama is installed, running, and has the model in OLLAMA_MODEL downloaded - without that, mentioning it gets no reply at all, and nothing is logged (check bot.error.log if you expect it to be working and it isn't replying). Each person can only trigger an AI answer once every 15 seconds; asking again sooner (or the Ollama request failing) just gets no reply rather than a second request, which keeps a burst of questions from bogging down your computer generating several replies at once.
• OLLAMA_MODEL in .env controls which model it uses (llama3.2 by default - small, fast, and good enough for short in-character replies). To use a different one, pull it yourself with ollama pull MODEL_NAME, set OLLAMA_MODEL=MODEL_NAME in .env, and restart it (re-run the installer, or pm2 restart discord-game-price-bot). Bigger models give better answers but take longer to reply and use more of your computer's memory.
• It remembers each person's last 3 exchanges (their message and its reply) so it can follow up naturally and stick to things you told it earlier in the conversation, like a correction or a preference. This memory is per-person, kept only in the bot's running memory (not saved to disk), and forgotten automatically after 30 minutes of that person not mentioning it.
• The bot's name, trigger word, and personality all come from personality.yaml. It ships set up as BMO from Adventure Time:

  name: BMO
  trigger: bmo
  persona: |
    You are BMO, the small handheld game console robot from Adventure Time. You are cheerful, innocent,
    a little literal-minded, and love games and your friends Finn and Jake. Playful, warm, a little silly,
    occasionally saying things like "Oh my glob" or calling the user "buddy" or "friend".
  

  Change name to whatever the bot should be called (used in a couple of log messages), trigger to the word that should make it reply (matched as a whole word, case-insensitive, anywhere in a message), and persona to a description of how it should talk and act - write it like you're describing a character to someone. It always stays an expert on this README and keeps replies to one short sentence, no matter what personality you give it. Edit the file and restart it (re-run the installer, or pm2 restart discord-game-price-bot) to pick up the changes. greetings.yaml and goodbyes.yaml have their own sample lines written in BMO's voice too - edit those separately if you want the join/leave messages to match a different personality.
• To turn the AI answers off without uninstalling Ollama (for example if you want your computer's resources back for something else), set AI_ENABLED=false in .env and restart it (re-run the installer, or pm2 restart discord-game-price-bot). Set it back to true (or remove the line entirely) to turn it back on. This only affects mention replies - everything else keeps working either way.

License

MIT