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.
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.
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
Better link about the background here is on SteamDB's blog: https://steamdb.info/blog/steamdb-nexus-mods/
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.
> https://steamdb.info/blog/steamdb-nexus-mods/
Someone posted that before I see (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49534491) so perhaps post can be merged to there
Title has an extra d after Steam.
And the company behind Nexus:
>We acquire. We amplify. We conquer.
https://www.wearechosen.io/
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.
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.
SteamDB is itself a massive collection of data - on pricing, game usage, etc. Scraped over years, in a way that Valve tolerate.
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.
I await your repo tomorrow, then! I'd be happy to use an alternative with all backfilled playercount data and sales history.
that's optimistic
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
I think that's perfectly reasonable if it means a more sustainable future
Probably have ads because idk who would pay to lift those limits.