Chosen, the parent company of Nexus Mods, is taking over ownership and operation of PC gaming data service SteamDB. Both SteamDB and Nexus Mods announced the acquisition via their official blogs on September 2.

SteamDB is a third-party database rather than a service operated directly by Valve. It tracks and provides data such as concurrent player counts, regional price histories, update logs, as well as changes to builds, depots, and manifests for games listed on Steam. SteamDB was co-founded by xPaw and Marlamin in 2013.

After co-founder Marlamin stepped back from the project, xPaw essentially ran the service alone for a long time. Although it started as a hobby project, as Steam's catalog, user base, and feature set expanded, the workload grew to the equivalent of a full-time job. Due to the mounting workload and burnout, xPaw decided it was unsustainable to continue running it alone and revealed that he had been searching for a partner to handle long-term operations since January of this year.

Chosen, the new operator, also owns Nexus Mods. However, SteamDB will maintain its existing name, branding, website, and community, operating as a separate service from Nexus Mods. Users will not need to create a Nexus Mods account to use SteamDB. All currently available features and data will remain intact, with a policy that no existing free features will be monetized.

xPaw stated, "SteamDB stays SteamDB," explaining that the goal of the transition is to secure the necessary staffing, development capabilities, and long-term stability for the service. He will assist the new team with the handover over the coming months. The transaction amount was not disclosed in either party's official announcement.

Chosen plans to assign dedicated personnel and infrastructure to SteamDB, enhancing its security and scalability. Maintenance and development of the browser extension will also continue. While SteamDB previously relied on Steam keys donated by users to track game files and depots, the parent company will now fund the purchase of necessary game keys going forward.

In the long term, plans are under consideration to link SteamDB's game builds, depots, manifests, files, and version histories with mod management tools. This could allow mod managers to compare a user's game version with the version a mod was created for, or provide advance warnings about compatibility issues caused by game updates. While Nexus Mods presented this as a way to improve the reliability of mod installation and collection management, it clarified that these ideas are not yet confirmed features or guaranteed releases.

Following the announcement, some users expressed concerns over potential paywalls or changes to monetization. According to the published FAQ, features currently available for free will remain free, and there are no plans to introduce display or programmatic advertising. However, affiliate links or partnerships may be considered in the long run, and whether future newly developed features will carry a fee has not yet been decided.