When Marlamin and I decided to start this project back in 2013, we were driven by pure curiosity and a desire to make helpful public services for the community. We were young and passionate.
I was always a fan of Valve's games and used to spend countless hours coming back from school working on custom game mode plugins for the CS 1.6 servers we used to run, so creating a project like SteamDB has been a natural progression of that drive.
Years went on, and the site kept growing and the amount of relentless work kept increasing. Marlamin decided to step back from the project for personal reasons. That was around the time Steam Direct launched, and the number of games and new users has exploded since then.
What started as a hobby project became something I could never have imagined. 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.
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.
Nexus Mods has been serving gaming communities for more than two decades and, like SteamDB, grew from a passion project into a service relied upon by tens of millions of people. What mattered most to me was finding a team that understands what it means to be responsible for something the community depends on, and that shares my belief in building useful tools for gamers.
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.
I have full confidence the team will be able to continue improving the project for gamers, developers and publishers alike. I will be helping the team ensure a smooth transition in the coming months.
This project has occupied my whole adult life. Thank you to everyone who has used SteamDB, contributed to it, reported bugs, shared it with others, or simply found it useful.
Victor Folmann, CEO of Nexus Mods and founder of Chosen, the company that owns Nexus Mods, said:
“I founded Chosen to become the kind of long-term owner I wish had existed when I sold my own company, someone who genuinely cares about what has been built, protects what makes it special, and listens to the community that made it possible.
SteamDB is exactly the kind of project we want to be a home for. Pavel has spent 13 years building something remarkable that millions of gamers, developers and publishers have come to rely on. We don't take the responsibility of becoming its next steward lightly.
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.
There will be things we want to improve and new things we want to build, but we'll do that thoughtfully. SteamDB has earned the trust of its community over more than a decade, and our job is to earn the right to carry that trust forward.”
You can read more about the announcement over at Nexus Mods.