I’ve been wanting to tie my gaming habits into HA automations for a while — lights when someone starts playing, notifications for free games, alerts when a wishlisted title hits its historical low. The problem is that the existing integrations each cover one piece of the puzzle but nothing ties it all together.
So I built HA Gaming Hub, a HACS custom component that unifies three modules in a single integration:
Free Games Aggregator Tracks free game promotions across Epic Games and GOG, creates a sensor.gaming_hub_free_games_count and a calendar.gaming_hub_free_games entity. Replaces and extends the native Epic integration — you get all platforms in one calendar instead of one.
Price Tracker Monitors a configurable watchlist of titles across 30+ stores via CheapShark and IsThereAnyDeal. Creates per-game sensors for current best price, best store and discount %, plus binary_sensor entities for “on sale” and “historical low” — the latter triggers only when a price is genuinely the best it’s ever been.
Gaming Presence Tracks Steam friends (online status, current game, session info) and Xbox presence via the native HA Xbox integration. Includes a binary_sensor.gaming_hub_someone_is_gaming that aggregates across all monitored accounts.
Some automation ideas to get you started
Lights turn red and Do Not Disturb activates when anyone in your household starts gaming
Get notified when the whole squad is online at the same time
Morning notification with the current free games available to claim
Push alert the moment a wishlisted game hits its all-time lowest price
“Someone is gaming” used as a condition to suppress other automations (vacuum, doorbell TTS, etc.)
Quick update — v0.2.0 is out with a bunch of new features since the original post. If you’re already using it, update via HACS. If you’re new, here’s what it does.
I built HA Gaming Hub, a HACS custom component that unifies gaming data into a single integration across three modules:
Free Games Aggregator
Tracks free game promotions across Epic Games and GamerPower. Creates sensor.gaming_hub_free_games_count, calendar.gaming_hub_free_games, and a binary_sensor.gaming_hub_free_game_expiring_soon that turns on when something is about to expire within 24 hours. Replaces and extends the native Epic integration — all platforms in one place.
Price Tracker
Monitors a configurable watchlist of titles across 30+ stores via CheapShark and IsThereAnyDeal. Per-game sensors for best price, best store, discount %, Metacritic score and cost-per-hour (best price ÷ HowLongToBeat main story hours). Binary sensors for “on sale” and “historical low”. A calendar.gaming_hub_deals shows flash sales with expiry dates. Watchlist can be managed directly from automations via the ha_gaming_hub.add_to_watchlist and ha_gaming_hub.remove_from_watchlist services.
Gaming Presence
Tracks Steam, Xbox and PlayStation Network accounts — online status, current game, and a sensor.<account>_session_duration that counts minutes in the active play session. Includes a binary_sensor.gaming_hub_someone_is_gaming that aggregates across all platforms. Events fire on session start/end (with duration), friend coming online, new free game and price drops — so automations react instantly without polling.
Some automation ideas
Lights turn red when anyone starts gaming
Notification when a wishlisted game hits its all-time low price
Morning briefing with free games available to claim
“Someone is gaming” as a condition to suppress vacuum, doorbell TTS, etc.
Log session duration to a helper when a session ends
Scene change or DND when a specific friend comes online on any platform
Installation
Still waiting on HACS default store review — in the meantime, add it as a custom repository: https://github.com/nuggetz/ha-gaming-hub
Feedback, bug reports and feature requests are all welcome!