SteamDB, the third-party database that tracks Steam player counts, price history, builds and update activity, has been acquired by Chosen, the company that owns Nexus Mods. Both sites announced the deal on September 2. The sum was not disclosed.
SteamDB launched in 2013 as a hobby project by Pavel Djundik, known as xPaw, and Marlamin. For most of its life it has been run largely by xPaw alone, and that is the reason he gives for selling.
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.
On what the sale is meant to change, his framing matches the one Nexus Mods uses.
SteamDB will continue to be SteamDB. The goal is not to change what makes the project special, but to give it the resources, development capacity and long-term stability that I could no longer provide alone.
What Nexus Mods says stays the same
The announcement is explicit about what does not change, which is where most of the community anxiety sits. Nexus Mods called SteamDB one of the most trusted resources in PC gaming and said it does not take the responsibility of becoming its next steward lightly. Victor Folmann, CEO of Chosen, said the job is not to change what makes SteamDB special but to give it a team, resources and long-term stability.
- SteamDB keeps its own name, URL, brand and community. It is not being folded into nexusmods.com.
- Everything currently free stays free, and there are no plans to move existing free features behind a paywall.
- No plans to add adverts to the site.
- No Nexus Mods account is required to browse SteamDB.
- The SteamDB browser extension continues to be maintained.
The announcement also says plainly that SteamDB needs to make money. The routes named are partnerships, integrations, affiliate links, and a proper API for developers and publishers. Nothing there is priced or dated yet.
Why a modding site wants a Steam database
SteamDB keeps a history of every Steam build, depot and manifest it has seen. A game update that changes those files is exactly the event that breaks mods built against the previous version. Nexus Mods wants to connect that record to its mod manager and to mod metadata.
The stated goals: identify which build of a game is installed on your PC, match mods to the builds they were made for, warn before an update is likely to break a setup, and make collections and mod lists install more reliably. Those are plans under exploration, not shipped features.
Why people are worried
The replies to the news are less measured than the announcement. The most common concern is monetization. Nexus Mods runs a paid Premium tier and has drawn criticism over download throttling and the Collections system, and SteamDB has been free and nearly ad-free for over a decade. The stated no-paywall and no-ads commitments cover existing features, and skeptics have noted that they say nothing about features added later.
The other concern is the loss of an independent operator. SteamDB is widely cited as a neutral source on player counts and update activity. Its owner is now a company whose modding business depends on relationships with the same publishers whose games SteamDB reports on. Nexus Mods says the two sites and their communities will remain separate for now.
xPaw, for his part, is not framing the sale as a loss. He described the project as having occupied his whole adult life and said he has full confidence the new team can keep improving it. A FAQ on SteamDB answers the ownership question directly: both sites now belong to Chosen, and neither is being folded into the other.
