The owners of Nexus Mods have acquired the community-run backend database SteamDB from its founders, both parties in the deal announced. Officials at the former, who have held the keys for 13 years, said their decision to step aside was rooted in burnout and a desire to find a suitable team to run SteamDB. Meanwhile, the owners of Nexus Mods, a company called Chosen, highlighted wanting to keep track of the game’s updates from a modding perspective as one of the factors that pushed them to make this deal.
“What started as a hobby project has grown into something I could never have imagined,” SteamDB co-founder xPaw wrote in a message announcing the news. “I’ve always been proud of the kind of useful service I’ve been able to create and maintain for all types of gamers and, later, for developers and publishers. Its usefulness has come with growth, but it doesn’t come for free. I’ve always considered SteamDB my hobby, but the number of hours I worked on it could be considered a full-time job. It was pure passion, and the ever-increasing workload I put on myself took its toll. harmful consequences.
“After COVID and with the advent of AI, the internet we once loved disappeared, and with it my passion. I started to burn out on the project, but I stuck with it. A few years ago, I tried to find someone to continue the project, but I couldn’t find a team I trusted, so I decided to continue on my own. Steam continues to grow, in terms of games, players, and number of new features added. It’s difficult to keep up with all of this alone, and the mental load has only increased, and in good conscience I can’t continue like this.”
So rather than leave their ship unmanned to fade into obscurity or shut down, they chose Nexus Mods as “a worthy partner” to manage SteamDB from here.
“If you are a user of the site, don’t worry, it will still be SteamDB, retaining its own name, brand, community and identity,” wrote Victor Folmann, CEO of Nexus Mods owners Chosen. a message on this site. “We’re not just integrating it into Nexus Mods, in fact, in the short term you shouldn’t notice much. It will still be the same site with all its features and data. xPaw will also continue to work with us over the coming months to ensure a smooth transition.
“That’s where things will start to change, it’s behind the scenes. With the site being run as a one-man operation for so long, we can now start giving it a properly funded team as well as better infrastructure, better security and better scalability. This should mean more capacity to work on long-standing improvements, maintain and develop things like the browser extension, improve gaming coverage and ensure that the future of the site doesn’t depend on one person having enough hours in the day to make everything work.
“As I mentioned previously, we also historically rely on Steam key donations to help track game files and repositories, and in addition, we will also begin to self-fund game keys that don’t always make it to our platform. Community contributions will absolutely always be essential, especially for games that people want to see better supported, but improving that coverage will no longer require donations entirely.”
However, Folmann certainly did not rule out bringing the sites closer together or subsequently integrating certain aspects into each other. “We will continue to explore how to connect the two to create something truly better and see what is possible over time,” he wrote. “This could mean eventually being able to help someone looking at a game on SteamDB discover its modding community, by bringing useful information from the site into Nexus Mods, or using SteamDB version data behind the scenes to make installing and maintaining mods less painful.”
In a FAQs Accompanying the announcement, the CEO noted that while access to SteamDB will remain free, Chosen will actively explore ways for the site to make money. “We want to be smart about this, and it’s very important that we don’t degrade SteamDB from the incredible resource that it is today,” Folmann wrote. “While we could simply put ads on the website, we don’t think that’s the right approach here. So we’ll look at other, lighter-touch ways of making the website sustainable. This may include using partnerships, integrations, and affiliate links with publishers when you purchase a game after visiting SteamDB. These are harder to do, take longer to set up, and may not show the benefits immediately, but we’re happy to take this hit in the interest to do things well.”
Folmann and his company Chosen only took over Nexus Mods in June last year. This deal saw founder Robin ‘Dark0ne’ Scott step down in a similar manner to SteamDB co-founders xPaw and Marlamin with this deal.
