Something quite unexpected here - the newer owners of Nexus Mods have now acquired the popular community website SteamDB, a site that many rely on.
  • Hal-5700X@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    10·
    12 hours ago

    The enshittification of the internet continues. This comes after a whole year of journalists and others sperging out about how steam charts were being weaponized by the chuds. Which I’m sure is just a coincidence!

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 @pawb.socialEnglish
    126·
    18 hours ago

    In it they note SteamDB might finally gain a proper API for people to use, and there’s no plans to put adverts on it.

    Cool. 😃

    But, they will be looking to commercialise it somehow - as they said, “SteamDB needs to make money”.

    Oh… 🫩 Aaaaaaaand it’s fucked.

    • creamfresh@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      4 hours ago

      Yes it’s fucked because running servers costs a lot of money and SteamDB runs on donations. So I hope you did donate at some point when you used their services and disapprove of this development.

    • Holytimes@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      7 hours ago

      Does my life time membership to nexus mods mean I also get life time membership to steam DB now? If not then fuck off nexus mods you sack of dog shit. I already regret how shitty you turned your site into don’t do it twice.

      If it does then my point still stands but I will also take advantage of this.

  • MurrayL@lemmy.worldEnglish
    191·
    22 hours ago

    If NexusMods is anything to go by, SteamDB will soon require an account to use, with strict limits unless you pay for premium access.

    • DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      31·
      18 hours ago

      Plus they’re going to allow developers to hide whenever they make changes so we can track minor changes anymore

      Fuck they’re going to break/API Paywall IsThereAnyDeal aren’t they

    • frongt@lemmy.zipEnglish
      550·
      16 hours ago

      Seems reasonable. Most people make a few requests, and heavy users can pay for the operational costs.

      Edit: that’s a lot of downvotes. People would prefer for it to just go offline entirely?

    • FlihpFlorp@piefed.zipEnglish
      43·
      18 hours ago

      Yep, and we all knew it was as a good sign when at the initial announcement they didn’t announce who

    • IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1640·
      22 hours ago

      If the choice is between consolidation and the current owner simply abandoning it, I’ll take the lesser of two evils.

      • inclementimmigrant@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
        75·
        21 hours ago

        I don’t know man. We’ve seen how bad enshitification takes hold once a big corporation takes over. Honestly, in a lot of cases, I would rather have them fade and get forked vs relying on the enshitificated version to amble along, like git hub, source forge, all of the game development studios in the past decade.

          • FishFace@piefed.socialEnglish
            33·
            20 hours ago

            In practice it does. There’s a big, entrenched competitor out there already, so that puts a damper on any motivation. If the site just closed down, that wouldn’t be the case.

            Even if SteamDB is gradually enshittified, there will still be that competitor that does a “good enough” job for a lot of people, meaning the bar for a new player to come along is higher.

          • dgdft@lemmy.worldEnglish
            18·
            20 hours ago

            Why would network externalities not apply here?

            They’re a very common and well demonstrated pattern that plays out with this sort of site; e.g. it’s taken almost a decade for many gaming wikis to get off fandom after they were locked in. There’s a finite pool of user attention and contribution that these projects can pull from, and splitting that pool worsens the commons.

      • Grimy@lemmy.worldEnglish
        22·
        19 hours ago

        There’s also selling it to another party that isn’t a vampiric parasite as an option. I doubt they were the only potential buyer.