Steam: The website that the entire industry uses to measure the success and failure of PC games has been sold—and now there’s growing concern

Nexus Mods is buying SteamDB. The new ownership has sparked fears within the community that features like the Steam charts could end up behind a paywall in the future.

This acquisition has sent shockwaves through the gaming industry: On September 2, the developer behind the popular tracking website SteamDB announced that he was selling his portalto the owners of the modding portal Nexus Mods after 13 years.

In a statement, the site’s former operator, PavelxPawDjundik, cited the heavy workload of being a solo developer as the reason for the move. Users now fear that the site could be aggressively monetized by the new owners in the future. No details about the purchase price were disclosed.

Why is SteamDB being sold?

xPaw writes in its statement regarding the saleon SteamDBthat he had started the site back thenas a pure hobby project. In recent years, however, the work required to run SteamDB has steadily increased. What was once a hobby turned into a full-time job, which led xPaw to burnout. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the current AI boom, he increasingly lost his enjoyment of working on SteamDB.

That’s why he tried to find a new partner who would continue SteamDB in line with his vision, and began talking to Nexus Mods and its parent company, Chosen, earlier this year. The Nexus owners understood the responsibility that comes withrunning a site used by millions of players, developers, and publishers.

Who are the new owners?

Overall, SteamDB is expected to benefit from the sale and, thanks to its new, well-capitalized owners, have the opportunity to grow in the coming years. However, many users are less convinced by the new owners; they suspect that the company with the ominous nameChosenwill try to monetize the portal as soon as possible, even though it has been completely free for everyone to use so far.

Chosen advertises on its website that it is an expert in growth and monetization and describes itself with the following slogan:

Chosen acquired Nexus Mods in June 2025 from its founder, RobinDark0neScott, who had also built the site as a hobby project at the time. No details regarding the purchase price were disclosed then either.

Why is SteamDB so important?

SteamDB’s publicly available statistics are of enormous importance to the gaming industry. Hardly any other website provides such a detailed overview of how games are currently performing on Steam. Players, journalists, and analysts in particular use the data to assess trends and the publicly visible development of games. Especially in the case of failed games like Highguard, the publicly available SteamDB figures made the drastic decline in the player base clear to everyone.

We gaming journalists also check SteamDB’s data almost daily to understand which games are currently trending, and we sometimes base our reporting on this information. In addition, the site provides a good overview of upcoming sales and the release calendar.

The fact that such information could soon disappear behind a paywall is causing great concern not only among gamers but virtually across the entire industry.& nbsp;On Reddit, many users are responding with gallows humor; the well-known Rockstar data miner VideoTech wroteon Twitter:This is terrible news.

However, SteamDB founder xPaw assures us:Everything that’s free on SteamDB today will remain free. If we ever do develop new features, we might make decisions accordingly, but nothing you know and use today will be taken away from you and then sold back to you.

However, there are definite plans to commercialize SteamDB. In theofficial FAQ, the new owners openly explain that the site will need to generate revenue in the future.

Possible options include partnerships and affiliate links for game purchases. Traditional advertisements are not currently planned. At the same time, Chosen promises not to move any of the features currently available for free behind a paywall. However, the company explicitly reserves the right to monetize completely new features.

What do you think of the SteamDB sale? Do you use the site regularly? Let us know in the comments!