Better link about the background here is on SteamDB's blog: <a href="https://steamdb.info/blog/steamdb-nexus-mods/" rel="nofollow">https://steamdb.info/blog/steamdb-nexus-mods/</a><p>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 <i>too much</i> the changes that will be needed to make it "sustainable".<p>> 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.<p>> This is where Nexus Mods comes in.<p>And Chosen's CEO:<p>> 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.<p>So the real news here is what "sustainable foundation" means.
Title has an extra d after Steam.
Crapd. Can't edit anymore. But like I suggested elsewhere, perhaps comments can be moved to <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49534491">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49534491</a>, they were first
And the company behind Nexus:<p>>We acquire. We amplify.
We conquer.<p><a href="https://www.wearechosen.io/" rel="nofollow">https://www.wearechosen.io/</a><p>lmao good luck.<p>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.<p>Though SteamDB is not irreplacebale at all, it’s running on the Steam Web API so not something super secret stuff.
Okay, so go ahead and replace it. Even if we ignore the whole historical data aspect of SteamDB, you may find that accurately tracking and storing as much data as possible for hundreds of thousands of apps on Steam may not be as easy as it sounds, especially when you're doing it for free.<p>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.
The fundamental function of the site can now be vibecoded in a day, so now has no value. The daily visitors are the only unused item of value remaining.
I await your repo tomorrow, then! I'd be happy to use an alternative with all backfilled playercount data and sales history that hasn't been sold out.
The value is in the contributed art.
that's optimistic
SteamDB is itself a massive collection of data - on pricing, game usage, etc. Scraped over years, in a way that Valve tolerate.<p>It could not be vibecoded in a day unless you want to hallucinate the data, which makes the site useless.<p>In fact, if the techbros actually tried, they'd force Valve into putting up anti-scraping countermeasures on all their APIs within hours.
So, looks like SteamDB is gonna get a billion features behind paywall. Probably gonna rate limit how many depots you can look up for free within the hour lol
Ah yes, Nexus Mods, where they'll ban you for making mods that change "Body Type A" and "Body Type B" back to "Male" and "Female", or remove mandatory pronoun selection.<p><a href="https://www.gameslearningsociety.org/did-nexus-mods-ban-pronouns/" rel="nofollow">https://www.gameslearningsociety.org/did-nexus-mods-ban-pron...</a><p>And while they're still full of mods adding anime waifus into Skyrim, they'll ban anyone who uploads "content deemed illegal by English law" because they love sucking up to the Online Safety Act. (The site should really not be hosted in the UK until that law is repealed)<p><a href="https://forums.nexusmods.com/topic/13520419-thevogelman-banned/" rel="nofollow">https://forums.nexusmods.com/topic/13520419-thevogelman-bann...</a><p>Does this mean that Steam's porn games will disappear from SteamDB as Nexus Mods puritanically censor their new acquisition?
Do you know of any good alternatives to Nexus Mods? A peer-to-peer system would be really cool. Mod hosting over something like Reticulum, with mod manager integration, sounds like a dream.
> Ah yes, Nexus Mods, where they'll ban you for making mods that change "Body Type A" and "Body Type B" back to "Male" and "Female", or remove mandatory pronoun selection.<p>Oh, no. If this is the most severe issue that the company has then we are fine.
Knowing Nexus, I do expect some manner of censorship, though the exact form this censorship will take remains to be seen.<p>I genuinely wouldn't be surprised if they started taking payments from game publishers to hide historical player count data for certain games that aren't doing very well.
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