Chosen buys SteamDB, pledges to keep site unchanged

Chosen, the company that owns Nexus Mods, has acquired SteamDB from its creator Pavel “xPaw” Djundik. Djundik will help with a transition he described as necessary after years of unpaid overtime and increasing maintenance demands.

SteamDB began in 2013 as a small project and expanded into a widely used tool for PC players to track new releases, player counts, patches, backend changes and historical lowest sale prices. Djundik co-founded the site with Marlamin and ran it alone after his partner left. He wrote that the work grew to the scale of a full-time job and that he had been seeking a partner since January before agreeing to the deal.

Chosen, which acquired Nexus Mods in June 2025, reached terms with Djundik to take over SteamDB’s operations and development responsibilities. Both parties pledged to preserve the site’s features and data and keep access free.

The new owners committed to avoiding traditional display ads and programmatic advertising. They added that they will study “lighter-touch ways to make the website sustainable,” which may include partnerships, integrations and affiliate links tied to purchases made after visiting SteamDB. Chosen wrote, “Yes, SteamDB needs to make money,” and promised “no paywall on anything that exists today, no selling your personal data, no login walls, no degrading the site to squeeze value out of it.”

The Nexus Mods team said the two projects share origins as small, volunteer-run efforts that expanded far beyond their founders’ expectations. The acquisition includes plans to explore technical links between SteamDB and modding tools, such as helping a mod manager detect which game version a player runs, whether installed mods target that version, and whether an incoming update may cause compatibility problems.

Chosen cautioned that building those features will require substantial development work and offered no timeline for delivery. The company also stated it does not intend to turn SteamDB into a mod distribution site, and that the tracking functions-player counts, pricing history and update information-will remain available to users who do not use mods.

Djundik described his reasons for the sale in a blog post, writing that he started SteamDB out of curiosity and a desire to provide useful public tools. He added, “I have always considered SteamDB to be my hobby, but the hours I have worked on it could be considered a full-time job,” and said he could not let the site wither or shut it down.

Both Djundik and Chosen published an FAQ outlining the transition plan and answering user concerns. Nexus Mods acknowledged that taking over SteamDB does not automatically transfer the trust the site has earned and said it will work to maintain reliability while gradually introducing funding models and integrations.