What’s the best way to handle players with a large number of games?

[refear99]

In my use case, both new and existing players may update their trophy data — either for the first time or multiple times.

I first use $user->trophyTitles() to populate new titles, groups, and trophies into my database.
Then I asynchronously call $client->trophies() to fetch their multi-language data — mainly the default en-US and my local language.

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How can this be handled efficiently?

For example, the user ikemenzi has over 18,000 trophy groups and 200,000 trophies.
Since each page returns 100 items, it takes around 180 API calls to fully loop through $user->trophyTitles().

Currently, when a user updates their trophy data, I loop through $user->trophyTitles().
If I find that the lastUpdatedDateTime of a game matches the one stored in my database, I stop the loop.

Because newly updated games appear first in the list, if game N has the same lastUpdatedDateTime as in my database, I assume that games after N haven’t been updated either.
(Am I understanding that correctly?)

Here’s a table showing the comparison logic:

Game Name	PSN lastUpdatedDateTime	DB Timestamp	Needs Update	Comparison Result
Game A	2025-07-30T12:00:00Z	2025-07-29T12:00:00Z	✅ Yes	PSN timestamp is newer, update required
Game B	2025-07-28T10:30:00Z	2025-07-28T10:00:00Z	✅ Yes	PSN timestamp is slightly newer, update required
Game C	2025-07-25T08:15:00Z	2025-07-25T08:15:00Z	❌ No	Same timestamp as DB, assume no further updates
Game D	2025-07-22T14:00:00Z	2025-07-22T14:00:00Z	❌ No	Same timestamp, skip

I break the loop at Game C, since its timestamp hasn’t changed. That means Game C and everything after (D, E, etc.) are assumed to be unchanged and are skipped.

Does anyone have better or more efficient strategies for handling this kind of large-scale trophy syncing?

Thanks in advance!

[Ragowit]

That's almost exactly how I do it myself for https://psn100.net, with some additional checks if the player have hidden trophies which requires me to scan the entire profile anyway to remove any game that have been hidden or add a game that's been unhidden.

But if there's a smarter way, I'm eager to learn it as well.

EDIT: I haven't really looked into it myself, but it feels more "right" to scan profiles backwards if possible. In your example, find that C is the latest entry in the DB. Then scan B and lastly A.

[refear99]

@Ragowit Thanks for the insight!

I’m curious — how do you determine if a player has hidden or unhidden any games?
Do you compare the number of games in your database with the totalResults from $user->trophyTitles() after an incremental sync?

If so, wouldn’t that be quite expensive for users with large game libraries — say, 10,000+ titles?

In my case, I’m currently leaning toward ignoring hidden/unhidden games for performance reasons, and asking users to contact an admin if they need those synced manually.

[Ragowit]

In my case, I’m currently leaning toward ignoring hidden/unhidden games for performance reasons, and asking users to contact an admin if they need those synced manually.

That's how I used to do it until just recently.

Anyway, the way I notice hidden trophies/games is that I have my own counter for each trophy that has earned = 1 for the player, and check that number against this:
$totalTrophies = $user->trophySummary()->platinum() + $user->trophySummary()->gold() + $user->trophySummary()->silver() + $user->trophySummary()->bronze();

$totalTrophies is always the amount of trophies, regardless if hidden or not. So if my count is different from this one, I know that something is hidden.