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SteamDB: https://steamdb.info/ https://steamdb.info/ I've been running it for over 10 years now, it's a database of Steam games, their updates, price history,
by xPaw 4y ago
SteamDB: https://steamdb.info/ https://steamdb.info/
I've been running it for over 10 years now, it's a database of Steam games, their updates, price history, charts, and a lot more.
In the early days we took monetary donations but stopped a few years in. It costs less than 100$ a month to run. Cloudflare reports 552.2M requests in the past 30 days, and 6.09M unique visitors.
- twostorytower 4y agoI want to say thank you for building this, but also there's no shame in putting a simple banner ad somewhere on the page. Most people who care have ad blockers, anyways.
- faangiq 4y agoDude take some revenue so you can continue doing cool stuff.
- HeavyStorm 4y agoThank you!
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- squiggy22 4y agoThe fact the you choose to keep this project ad free is fire.
- xenotize 4y agoYou run SteamDB? Thanks for making this! I've used it for all those 10 years whenever I'm getting back into gaming and want to see what the popular games are! The player count charts are a really awesome feature. Thanks for keeping it running all these years.
- NotACop182 4y agoYes same here. Still use it to find upcoming trending games.
- michaelmior 4y agoI'm not a heavy Steam user, but SteamDB is great. Thank you!
- johnmorrison 4y agoThank you! Love the site.
- modeless 4y agoWow, you don't make any money on SteamDB? It seems like the sort of thing that should be able to make a lot of money. Even very minimal ads would probably bring in hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars per year, and if you hate the idea of ads it seems like you could probably sell a premium subscription for some of the info you have that would be useful for devs, like imdb pro or crunchbase pro or something.
- xPaw 4y agoI can, but I have no interest in doing that currently.
- sswezey 4y agoThank you!
- i4i 4y agoI hate ads too. The thing I tried that felt ethical and useful was an affiliate code for related (to the content) products that would split the discount 50/50 between me and readers. I stated this clearly in the ad.
- wly_cdgr 4y agoExtremely baller
- modeless 4y agoIf you don't mind me asking, what's your day job?
- cyrux004 4y agocheck his profile by clicking on id full stack developer per his home page
- modeless 4y agoIt's clear that he is a (very good!) full-stack developer. I am curious about where he works, or if he is retired or something, living off investments while working on SteamDB full time. I think very few people would knowingly turn down income of a million dollars per year. In fact I'd say it's a privilege to be in a position to be able to turn that down. I even see some people here who are asking him to make the income even though he doesn't want it so he can give it to a charity.
- bluesroo 4y agoThe amount of value I get out of your service is nuts! No better place to figure out whether a multiplayer game is worth getting... Daily users is hard metric to game or lie about.
- mehlmao 4y agoThank you! SteamDB has been super helpful for me. I like to be able to pull posters and banner art for games, and it's also super helpful for untangling bundles of Rocksmith DLC.
- princevegeta89 4y agoWait, why are you not monetizing it? that traffic looks bonkers
- bakugo 4y agoThankfully, some people out there still do things because they enjoy it and not because they think there's money to be made.
- vinhboy 4y agothose two things are not always mutually exclusive
- account42 4y agoMonetizing something usually affects what you create as well as your experience creating it. It can easily be a negative effect.
- princevegeta89 4y agoWell, my 2c is that making money is an enjoyable activity as well. As someone who loved all the RTS/Tycoon games back in 2000's, I look at making money through own ventures as just another game at the same time
- sfink 4y agoSometimes making money off of something turns out to be incompatible with enjoyment, and you find out too late. Depends on the person, how slippery the slippery slope is, and the motivation for a particular project. I could ask myself "how much money would I be willing to pay to bring benefit to a large number of people?" It's definitely nonzero. But that's not a great question, because we all hate losing stuff we have (and paying is losing). It's a lot easier psychologically to forgo getting the money in the first place. (Note that I wouldn't be able to forgo that much money. Though I might be able to procrastinate throwing the monetization switch for a while. How long is relative to my level of privilege in my own finances.)
- nabakin 4y agoImpressive. What's your tech stack? How are you able to keep the cost so low?
- bakugo 4y agoAssuming it hasn't changed in the past 2 years: > nginx, latest php, mariadb. > and of less importance: memcached and influxdb. https://twitter.com/thexpaw/status/1315941483867000833 https://twitter.com/thexpaw/status/1315941483867000833
- pastor_bob 4y agoWhen's the Next.js migration?
- nabakin 4y agoThanks!
- xPaw 4y agoThat's still correct.
- zucker42 4y agoWhy do you not take donations?
- pmlarocque 4y agoHe does: https://steamdb.info/donate/ https://steamdb.info/donate/ link is just above footer of main page.
- modeless 4y ago"Currently we do not accept monetary donations"
- calderknight 4y agoThat's a bit misleading. SteamDB don't accept monetary donations. Games are they only thing they accept donations of.
- pmlarocque 4y agoWell as xPaw already stated he does not seem to interested in money. I would guess: Give a Steam Award to xPaw A Steam Award gives the creator of this site Steam points! Is the best we can do to support his work! I just wanted to point there is a /donate. Not sure why it need to be cold hard cash to count.
- 4y ago
- moneywoes 4y agoAmazing. What is your setup like to make costs so low, a lot of caching?
- tehlike 4y agoamazing product.
- MrGilbert 4y agoI always wondered how Valve thinks about this project. And congrats on the project itself, for sure!
- Ruq 4y agoHoly cow, thank you so much for this resource.
- wellthisisgreat 4y agothanks a lot for making this happen, in this exceptionally altruistic way, learning that such as staple as steamdb is a passion/hobby project really makes one believe in the software engineering mission
- ss108 4y agoUpvoting, as a Dota2 enjoyer/sufferer
- dxhdr 4y agoYou're passing on $50k-100k per month of ad revenue from just basic banner ads... at least based on how RPMs were a few years ago. I respect that, definitely not the decision I'd make.
- nomel 4y agoI know nothing of this, but does .info reduce the numbers, compared to something like .com, all other things aside? edit: err, it's a genuine question, from someone that doesn't work in/with advertising, and had a .info domain within the first month they were offered, in 2001. Here's a rephrasing: Do ad networks, or customers of those networks, treat TLDs differently?
- topicseed 4y agoI see your maths here but Cloudflare hits include any assets, images, and so on so one page views fans out potentially dozens of hits. Cloudflare also includes all bots and non-human hits.
- modeless 4y agoPage views are ~140 million per month: https://twitter.com/thexpaw/status/1604768632331870209/photo/1 https://twitter.com/thexpaw/status/1604768632331870209/photo... Assuming $0.50 net CPM on one AdSense unit per page view, that would be $70k monthly/$840k yearly revenue. And since operating cost is $100, that's all profit. I'm no AdSense expert but I believe this would be super conservative, maybe an expert could chime in with higher realistic numbers. Even if you don't like advertising there are other ways you could earn money with a site like SteamDB.
- loyski 4y agoCloudflare stats are inflated. I have a site getting 30k visits a day according to Google Analytics but Cloudflare says it's close to 100k. So I think Cloudflare doesn't filter out bots in their analytics.
- 4y ago
- skilled 4y agoSteamDB is awesome!
- taesu 4y agoYou are an absolute chad. I salute you. Not to undermine your motive and intent, but people will gladly click on links to support your site. Regardless, what a legend you are.
- lippingoff 4y agoI love your site! I suggest it to everyone.
- insane_dreamer 4y agoHad never seen your site before (stopped gaming before Steam became popular), but in visiting it now, very surprised to see that CS is still __by far__ the most popular online game. Great resource. Thanks!
- BowBun 4y agoAvid user for years, so cool to see you on the social web! Thanks for your work! I'm annoyed for you at all these people trying to tell you what to do with your project, after you've been doing it successfully for 10 years and they have not. Y'all really think this person hasn't thought about monetizing? Take it easy startup-stans!
- AussieWog93 4y agoI can definitely see the frustration. Highly money-motivated people working their arse off to try and make even $1k MRR, and all this guy needs to do is push a button and he's got 100k. Must blow their minds.
- skeeter2020 4y agoI haven't read every comment, but I see a lot of surprise, a lot of respect and no annoyed/pissed off "startup-stans". Where are you getting this from?
- wisie 4y agoThanks for making this available. Has been a huge help over the years. Would make a good platform for other side projects (e.g. SteamDB YouTube) if you were to look for new challenges one day.
- jeffwask 4y agoYou're a hero to all gamers. Take a bow sir.
- cptnapalm 4y agoI want you to know that I love you.
- sureglymop 4y agoWow, crazy to see how many players Unturned has. I used to love that game years ago. AFAIK it was created by a teenager at the time.
- headwayoldest 4y agoAs someone who played Fallout 4 with mods, thank you very much!
- moerschbacher 4y agoThat's awesome! I've been using SteamDB for years.
- NotACop182 4y agoBig fan use it all the time
- ushercakes 4y agoBruh! I love this site. You absolutely could put ads here, in a way that isn't annoying. I guarantee you that there are game shops out there that would pay you like $10k minimum to "Feature" their game for a month or something. You feature 5 games a month for 10k, you suddenly are at 50k/mo. Or, you could go the route of using traditional ads like google ads etc, but those can be kind of spammy and the ad targeting kind of sucks. I'd really recommend exploring that, and don't feel bad about using ads. You deserve to get rewarded for the excellent site you've put together, a lot of people clearly get value out of it.
- whymauri 4y agoYou are a lifesaver. Cheers to you!
- birdyrooster 4y agoThank you very much! Your killer feature for me is being able to sort my library by fewest hours played and highest review rating so I get the best value out of my library.
- robflynn 4y agoOh, cool, I used to run something very similar called steamwatch.com, back before they allowed you to have watch lists. It would monitor prices, let you know about sales, and I would occasionally run game give away raffles for free with whatever ad revenue I collected. It only ever made maybe $100 over its entire run. This would've been over 10 years ago though so I doubt mine and yours ever coexisted.
- steine65 4y agoThanks so much. This site has helped me find new games, and it has saved me lots of money with the price history feature.
- cardimart 4y agoThe only explanation for why he is not monetising it is that he is Gabe Newell.
- green-eclipse 4y agoThis is amazing! Is there a way to limit the charts to certain platforms only, like Mac or Linux compatible games?
- sadn1ck 4y agoWow, thank you for your work! Regularly use steamdb, lovely site!
- aliqot 4y agoRespect
- machilin 4y agoUsed it some years ago and thought that it was a really good front-end to the Steam store since the search interface is a bit lacking. Am surprised to see that this has millions of visitors but has such low running cost. Must be really highly optimized SQL queries and code there!
- shmde 4y agoJust wanted to say big big fan. Have extensively used it during sales to see the lowest record prices. I absolutely love everything about the site, the design, the layout. Thank you for making it.
- muzani 4y agoI actually wouldn't mind some ads on this. Not the generic Google banner ads, but some cutesy illustrated banner in the style of Darkest Dungeon and such. Open an ad slot for bidding and the most interesting banner wins.
- amitp 4y agoThank you! I love the site. And also thank you for not having ads.
- grimgrin 4y agoinstant search is easily my favorite way to experience steamdb to those who haven't used the tool (listed at bottom of page), it can be great for discoverability with a ton of filters, and quick responses https://steamdb.info/instantsearch/ https://steamdb.info/instantsearch/
- izwasm 4y agoI wonder what's the cost of running this ?
- RobbiewOnline 4y agoKudos on the site & no ads. Like others have said you could have affiliate deals with the game publishers direct, so there will be no in your face adverts. You could also have banner ads that are complimentary. Perhaps you don't need money, but personally I'd capture what I could as over 10 years that would be substantial. You would then have extra reserve savings for yourself in case your circumstances change, or you could hand it over to charities Love what you're doing regardless
- matheusmoreira 4y agoHuge fan here. It's impressive that it costs less than $100/month to run such a great service. Thank you so much.
- ngshiheng 4y agoGrew up using this. Thank you!
- poulpy123 4y agoI'm not an user myself but since many comments chastise you of not making money with ads, I would like to thank you for your work and for keeping it free from ads
- 6510 4y agoYes, thanks for reminding me and everyone else that you can just do something nice for others and pay for it. Maybe it is worth paying $0.00000018109 to satisfy someones request? If they are running up the bill to $0.00001642036 per person (90.6751339113 req/user/month) there must be something there worth something for them? I get that some people are to cheap to purchase fun for others but at these rates it is more like people are against fun in general. One can be cheap but one cant be that cheap? I've had this discussion before... uhh... a few times. Them: Why are you doing this???? me: Aren't you having fun? Them: YEAH, but why???? me: You see little jimmy over there? You think he is enjoying himself too? Them: uh yes? But why???? me: Well, I don't mind it.
- ultrablack 4y agoMake money through referer links?
- maltris 4y agoCool! I've been recently using it to find free weekend games.
- prakashn27 4y agoSteam should buy you , you are driving revenue for them. I respect you for what you have done.
- YuryVladkov 4y agoHey there! Thanks for creating this site. Long time user here. It is an awesome product! I was curious about the system design diagram of SteamDb. What type of DB do you use to record historical prices?
- juliusgeo 4y agoI have used your site so many times. Thank you for all the work you’ve put into it.
- hn92726819 4y agoHow would you suggest starting data-mining for a project like this? Every time I think of a project like this, I convince myself that steam/amazon/twitter/Facebook/etc will rate limit any bot that tries to scrape data from their service.
- fnfontana 4y agoI would suggest you to place a donation regressive counter with the price that takes to make the website run, let's say 100 USD, everytime someone make a donation the value updates until it reaches the donation goal of the month.
- drumttocs8 4y agoAre you independently wealthy from another project or inheritance? Would you monetize it to fund a nonprofit or charity?
- account42 4y agoThak you (and Marlamin) for SteamDB and especially for providing Linux filters as well as the steamdb IRC bot that you ran. Sad that you moved your channel off of IRC when Freenode died. Respect for keeping the site ad-free.
- rldjbpin 4y agoi am a bit late to comment but thanks for creating and maintaining the service for all this time! it really came in clutch when deciding on buying new games. i am curious to hear from you about your experiences with people trying to scrape data off the site. i noticed that we cannot go back beyond a couple years for price history without logging in for one. is that a decision made because of people scraping data?
- absolute100 4y agoYeah making money from such website can be dangerous. You would get lawsuit from Valve
- jonaustin 4y agoValve is probably one of the least likely of companies to sue someone for doing something cool with their stuff.
- absolute100 4y agoI don't think so. If the owner monetize it, it's very likely ...