Nexus Mods is acquiring database and analytics site SteamDB

What the report says

Diego Argüello,Contributing Editor, News,GameDeveloper.comSeptember 2, 20262 Min ReadImage via SteamDBThe company in charge of PC modding portal Nexus Mods is acquiring SteamDB, a long-standing database and analytics site.While not officially affiliated with Valve's Steam platform, SteamDB is constantly referenced by developers and players alike, as it shows live information for any game hosted by Steam such as concurrent players counts.SteamDB founder xPaw says the goal of joining Nexus Mods is "not to change what makes the project special, but to give it resources, development capacity, and long-term stability" that they could no longer provide alone.While the platforms don't exactly provide the same service, co-owner and head of Nexus Mods Victor Folmann explains that there are multiple similarities between them.

In terms of backstory, both started as passion projects aimed at the PC community, which then grew beyond expectations, eventually becoming services that millions of people rely on."SteamDB has also spent more than a decade building trust with its community by giving people useful, transparent information about the games they play," Folmann says. "Something it does incredibly well. We think that's worth protecting, and we're not interested in changing SteamDB into something it isn't."On the Nexus side of things, the co-owner believes that owning SteamDB will help with making modding easier, as it'll provide a better understanding of the game that the player is installing mods into."We have already started collecting Steam game data ourselves, but once an update is pushed, manifests and data for the old versions become much more difficult to access.

SteamDB already does this far better than we can, and has a massive back-catalogue to draw from."The other area of interest relates to game updates. As Folmann explains, a sudden update tends to mean that an already installed mod might not work anymore. Over time, Nexus wants to explore how a mod manager could better understand which version of the game someone is running, and whether an incoming update is likely to cause issues."SteamDB already tracks an incredible amount of information about game builds, depots, manifests, files, and update history across Steam, including years of historical data," the co-owner says.

Key details

"Being able to connect that information with modding tools and mod metadata opens up some really interesting possibilities for making modding more reliable."Game Developer recently sat down with Folmann to discuss his plans to make the platform more than a file-hosting business, steering an open-source platform, the challenges of making mods easier to use, and the complex relationships between developers and the players who mode their games. You can listen to the full episode here.SteamTop StoriesAbout the AuthorDiego ArgüelloContributing Editor, News, GameDeveloper.comDiego Nicolás Argüello is a freelance journalist and critic from Argentina.

Video games helped him to learn English, so now he covers them for places like The New York Times, NPR, Rolling Stone, and more. He also runs Into the Spine, a site dedicated to fostering and supporting new writers, and co-hosted Turnabout Breakdown, a podcast about the Ace Attorney series. He’s most likely playing a rhythm game as you read this.See more from Diego Argüello