“The internet we once loved is gone”: SteamDB founders announce the community-run database has been acquired by Nexus Mods’ owners

The owners of Nexus Mods have acquired community-run backend database SteamDB from its founders, the two sides in the deal have announced. The folks behind the former, who’ve held its keys for 13 years, said their decision to step back is rooted in burnout and a desire to find a suitable team to keep SteamDB running. Meanwhile, Nexus Mods’ owners, a company called Chosen, have pointed to wanting to keep track of game updates from a modding perspective as one of the factors that’s drawn them to make this deal.

“What started as a hobby project became something I could never have imagined,” SteamDB co-founder xPaw wrote in a post announcing the news. “I always took pride in what kind of a helpful service I was able to create and sustain for all kinds of gamers and, in later years, developers and publishers. With its helpfulness came growth, but that doesn’t come for free. I have always considered SteamDB to be my hobby, but the amount of hours I have worked on it could be considered a full-time job. It was pure passion, and the ever increasing self inflicted workload has taken its toll.

“After COVID and with the rise of AI, the internet we once loved is gone, and with it my passion. I have started experiencing burnout with the project, but I powered through. A few years ago I tried to find someone to continue the project, but I couldn’t find a team that I was confident in, so I decided to keep going by myself. Steam keeps growing, in terms of games, players, and the number of new features being added. It’s hard to keep on top of this alone, and the mental load has only kept increasing, and in good conscience I cannot continue like this.”

So, rather than leave their ship uncrewed to fade into obscurity or shutting it down, they’ve settled on Nexus Mods as “a worthy partner” to take on running SteamDB from here.

“If you’re a user of the site, don’t worry, it’ll still be SteamDB, keeping its own name, brand, community, and identity,” Victor Folmann, CEO of Nexus Mods owners Chosen wrote in a post on that site. “We aren’t just folding it into Nexus Mods, in fact, in the short-term, there shouldn’t be much you notice at all. It’ll still be the same site with all its features and data. xPaw will continue to work with us over the coming months as well to make sure it’s a smooth transition.

“Where things will start to change is behind the scenes. With the site being effectively run as a one-man band for so long, we can now start giving it a properly funded team alongside better infrastructure, security, and scalability. That should mean more capacity to work through long-standing improvements, maintain and develop things like the browser extension, improve game coverage, and make sure the future of the site doesn’t depend on one person having enough hours in the day to keep it all running.

“As I mentioned before, it’s also historically relied on donated Steam keys to help track game files and depots, and in addition we’ll also start funding keys ourselves to games that don’t always find their way to our platform. Community contributions will absolutely still be key, particularly for those games people want to see better supported, but improving that coverage won’t need to rely entirely on donations anymore.”

Though, Folmann certainly didn’t rule out moving the sites closer together or integrating aspects for them into each other further down the line. “How connecting the two to make something genuinely better is what we’ll continue to explore and see what is possible over time,” he wrote. “That might mean being able to eventually help someone looking at a game on SteamDB to discover its modding community, bringing useful information from the site into Nexus Mods, or using SteamDB’s version data behind the scenes to make installing and maintaining mods less painful.”

In an FAQ accompanying the announcement, the CEO noted that while SteamDB will stay free to access, Chosen will actively be looking into ways that the site can make money. “We want to be smart about it, and it’s very important that we don’t degrade SteamDB from the amazing resource 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 be looking at other, lighter-touch ways to make the website sustainable. This may include use of partnerships, integrations, and affiliate links with publishers when you buy 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 that hit in the interest of doing things right.”

Folmann and his firm, Chosen, only took over Nexus Mods in June last year. That deal saw founder Robin ‘Dark0ne’ Scott step aside in a similar fashion to how SteamDB co-founders xPaw and Marlamin are with this deal.