SteamdDB Joins Nexus Mods
nexusmods.com
nexusmods.com
It seems pretty standard in terms of trajectory: hobby project blew up and became a thing people relied on, founder grew up over the years as well and can't sustain it. Company steps in to provide the "right resources", but inevitably doesn't emphasize too much the changes that will be needed to make it "sustainable".
> Running a service like SteamDB is not easy. I wouldn't be able to live with myself by either just letting the site run as-is and letting it wither, or completely shut it down. In January, I started looking for a worthy partner that could continue the legacy that I had built.
> This is where Nexus Mods comes in.
And Chosen's CEO:
> Our job isn't to change what makes SteamDB special. It's to give it the resources, team and long-term stability it deserves, while building a sustainable foundation that allows us to keep investing in and improving it for many years to come.
So the real news here is what "sustainable foundation" means.
Someone posted that before I see (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49534491) so perhaps post can be merged to there
I think that's answered pretty well by the 5 ads that open when I visit the announcement page on nexusmods.com link in the OP vs the speedy and clean UI that on the steamdb.info version (for now).
Running a website of this magnitude costs money and I don't expect people to keep paying out of pocket forever. It is nice as long as it lasts.
Just because it's ads for another site within the corporate umbrella doesn't make it any less of an ad. I also expect that to be just the start of the enshittification. I fully expect them to remove features, then add "new" features that are basically the same as the old ones, but that time behind paywalls. So that they can claim that they technically aren't making free features paid.
> After COVID and with the rise of AI, the internet we once loved is gone, and with it my passion.
And I really have to say that it's very relatable.
About a year ago there was a "Show HN" post (can't find it now) and the SteamDB guy won the internet that day.
He went into details on how running SteamDB wasn't much of a trouble and it was mostly eye candy on top of the Steam API, in some VPS for $100/mo total, and little maintenance (apparently the Steam APIs are fairly stable).
If he wants to cash it and check out, fine by me, you can't blame him.
Maybe they'll change their minds when NM tries to monetize it. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if they just create their own first-party version, then nuke this one.
>We acquire. We amplify. We conquer.
lmao good luck.
Love how the guy was running the site alone becaue he couldn’t “trust anyone else” and ended up selling to a company like this.
Though SteamDB is not irreplacebale at all, it’s running on the Steam Web API so not something super secret stuff.
It could not be vibecoded in a day unless you want to hallucinate the data, which makes the site useless.
In fact, if the techbros actually tried, they'd force Valve into putting up anti-scraping countermeasures on all their APIs within hours.
That only leaves the remaining 99.9% of work. Good luck.
SteamDB is (was) one guy's passion project, that's the only way a site like this can work, and passion projects in tech are a thing of the past. There's no way to monetize it without making it borderline unusable. I am confident that, when SteamDB inevitably becomes a cesspit of intrusive ads and/or starts locking features behind a paywall (that no one will pay for, because paying a monthly subscription to see metadata for Steam games is insane, which will lead to more desperate measures and possibly an eventual shutdown of the site), no suitable replacement will be made.
Is it possible to use Steam API to collect all the data that SteamDB collected over the years again?
Alternatively, maybe someone needs to to scrape SteamDB asap before they lock it down?
Nothing changed for the worse since that time. So don't expect any immediate changes.
Does Nexus also get control of the SteamDB browser extension? While I was willing to trust xPaw for the convenience it provides I don't want to extend that trust to Nexus Mods.
Meanwhile when I have occasionally ventured into per-game modding communities I've found the quality always pretty low and at times even feeling potentially scammy. So I don't think that "per game community run infrastructure" is an automatically good thing, as you seem to be implying. Probably the contrary, in fact.
Even aside from the scammy feeling I got (it was years ago, GTA V mods maybe is what comes to mind), running a community is whole project in itself that most games simply won't drum up the interest for, so modding for all but very popular games would suffer.
Personally, I just can't imagine anyone paying a monthly fee just to access metadata for Steam games and nothing else. At least with Nexus Mods, you're paying for (easier) access to actual content for your games.
"Why should the community trust Nexus Mods with SteamDB?"
You shouldn't have to take our word for it, so here are the commitments, in writing, that you can hold us to:
SteamDB stays free.
Nothing currently free goes behind a paywall.
We don't sell your personal data.
SteamDB keeps its own identity, site and community.
The extension stays free and keeps working.So they'll add a ton of ads.
> Nothing currently free goes behind a paywall.
Technically true for Nexus Mods as well but they sure make access cumbersome for non-paying users.
> We don't sell your personal data
So they'll sell (barely) "anonymized" data.
> The extension stays free and keeps working
Yeah that's not the main concern people should have with an extension that gets free reign on the Steam store.
It has been a constant good source for TitleIDs (for the steam compat folder when modding on linux), for Steam frame Hopium (when they updated FEX or Lepton or the Stick driver again) and looking at the patch history of games.