Steam Hardware

RIP SteamDB, prepare for the enshittification

From their FAQ: https://steamdb.info/faq/?guildid=215154001799413770

What are you going to do with it?

Short term: nothing you'll notice. SteamDB keeps running exactly as it does today. Same site, same features, same data, same URL, still free.

Then we invest. SteamDB goes from essentially a one-person operation to a cross-functional team with modern infrastructure, security and scalability. That means long-standing backlog items actually shipping, more robust infrastructure, and less "everything depends on one person not burning out."

We will also be connecting SteamDB's data to modding tools and modding metadata so a mod manager can know which build of a game you're running, warn you before an update breaks your setup, and make things like collections/mod lists install significantly more reliably.

Are you going to commercialise it?

We're going to be straight about this rather than dance around it: yes, SteamDB needs to make money. What xPaw has built - and kept running largely through personal dedication and community donations - is an extraordinary achievement. Giving it the team, infrastructure and long-term investment it deserves is how we protect that work and ensure SteamDB can thrive for the next decade and beyond.

That said, we want to be smart about it, and it’s very important that we don’t degrade SteamDB from the amazing resource it is today. While we could simply put ads on the website, we don’t think that’s the right approach here. So we’ll be looking at other, lighter-touch ways to make the website sustainable. This may include use of partnerships, integrations, and affiliate links with publishers when you buy a game after visiting SteamDB. These are harder to do, take longer to set up, and may not show the benefits immediately, but we’re happy to take that hit in the interest of doing things right.

Here's what it does not mean: 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. Enshittification is when an owner extracts value while the product gets worse. Our plan is the opposite direction: put money and people in so the product gets better. Judge us on what we ship.