An Open Letter to Our Readers

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Dear fellow Linux gamer, we’d like to take a minute to express our appreciation for you taking the time to visit BoilingSteam and reading our articles. We truly value your feedback, as well as our past and present contributors.

Boiling Steam has been in operation since 2014 and has only been maintained by two people: myself and Ekianjo, owner of the site. (Heck, there was a time when I took a break from writing for a couple of years, leaving Ekianjo all by himself.) Throughout the years we’ve written reviews, news, opinions, guides, and occasional Q&A’s with developers, peppered with a few podcasts – most of which pertain to Linux gaming and Linux/FOSS in general. Six years later, nearly 400 articles have been published, only a little over 10% of which I have personally written. Quite a few of them made headlines in very large communities like Hacker News, r/linux or r/linux_gaming.

All of this has been done in our spare time and out of our passion for Linux gaming.

Now, if you’re guessing that we’re trying to ask for your donations, that’s not the purpose of this letter – although, of course, they’re always appreciated. What I’m trying to get at here, is that we would like YOU, the reader, help our web site grow by means of additional writers. With more writers comes a greater variety of subjects covered, a larger array of writing styles, as well as keeping Boiling Steam fresh with new content to read.

While I tend to mostly focus on fighting, racing, and RPGs, with occasional reviews for Linux distributions and hardware, Ekianjo is more so a general news reporter who likes to cover market trends. With your help, we could start covering things like strategy games, simulators, or obscure indie titles that have never seen the light of day.

We’re aware that, while we have been posting a lot more since the past few months, having an article or two out a week may not be enough. We’re not asking you to rush; if all you can do is contribute once a month that’s fine. No commitment is required. But having a third or fourth writer gives readers one more reason to visit BoilingSteam.

You don’t have to send us a resume, but sending us a few examples of articles you’ve written in the past will help. In terms of what we’re looking for, we’re pretty open-minded when it comes to Linux or Linux gaming: it could be a review of a distro that you really like, or a desktop environment or a piece of open-source software, a game that you’re really excited for or a piece of hardware you received that’s particularly designed for Linux usage. Really, anything that pertains to Linux, and if it’s a game, that it either is natively available for Linux or is compatible with tools like Proton.

Writing is not for you? We are also getting more and more active on our video channels (Peertube, Youtube) and we would welcome any kind of video content or commentary as well.

While we can’t exactly compensate your time by monetary means, you’ll have your voice heard in one of the few places on the Internet that is dedicated to Linux gaming. We may also be able to send you a Steam key from the developer of a game that you want to review.

We know that, just as you care about having multiple distributions to choose from and what software you use, you also care about having multiple sources for your Linux gaming news. We’d love the help! Get in touch if you have a couple of ideas in mind.

And even if you don’t have any desire to write, your continued feedback on our articles is greatly appreciated. Send us a hello on our Matrix channel: #boilingsteam:matrix.org, or reach us on Mastodon / Twitter if you prefer.

Thank you!