We asked Chris Were to review his predictions for Linux Gaming for 2023. We already reviewed Boiling Steam’s predictions for 2023 a few days back. Now let us give the mic to Chris below.

Hello I’m Chris Were. I sometimes make videos on YouTube (@ChrisWereDigital and @itsLudoChris), but my Fediverse content is the stuff I’m most passionate about (ChrisWere@toot.wales). This year I’ve been slightly more successful with my predictions.

Last year I wrote:

“OpenMW will merge the multiplayer forks into its main branch, which will mean that a whole bunch of new people will start playing Morrowind multiplayer. Non-FOSS (free and open source software) and non-Linux gaming YouTubers and Twitch streamers will be putting out videos of people having fun and breaking the game in multiplayer.”

This didn’t happen. Whilst I do hope that this ends up happening, it’s still great to see the OpenMW making progress in any areas. Their latest release (0.48) has a lot of improvements in its graphical fidelity.

Last year for my second prediction I wrote:

“The Steam Deck will continue to experience steady growth in popularity following the announcement of a new release, which will be an incremental improvement and a refined version of the Steam Deck.”

Many will be aware of the latest Steam Deck and its OLED screen. It was very well received by critics and seems to be an indication of the growing success and popularity of not only the Steam Deck but the recognition of Linux as a gaming platform. One thing, I think, many Linux supporters were worried about is that it would become popular to take the Steam Deck hardware and put Windows on it. As we’ve seen Windows become ever worse, and Valve putting so much good development into the Linux gaming ecosystem as a whole, we’ve seen the vast majority of Steam Deck users full embrace and enjoy the Linux/Steam Deck experience. What I hope to see in the future is the further development of Steam OS to the point where it becomes a viable operating system for desktop gaming and touted as such by Valve. It would be cool if we started seeing some gaming PCs sold with Steam OS preinstalled.

Last year for my third prediction I wrote:

“Ubuntu has lost its top spot as the gaming Linux platform. Despite Canonical’s attempt to bolster its status as a gaming platform, it will remain in second place.”

Arch based distros, including Steam OS, are dominating the gaming scene. That being said, Ubuntu based distros like Pop!_OS and Linux Mint are still represented amongst leading distros in the Steam survey.

Last year for my fourth prediction I wrote:

“Canonical will attempt to add proprietary games to the Snap Store for sale in an attempt to legitimise it to users. This will fail to gain any traction for the platform. Flathub will also start selling games; it’ll be off to a slow start but may gain little traction in the coming years since Itch.io has already made a decent name for itself as a Steam alternative. Neither platform will come close to challenging Itch.io and certainly not Steam.”

The Snap Store certainly seems to have fall off the radar for a lot of Linux gamers. I for one have not heard any gaming news related to the snap Store. Any efforts of Ubuntu to get into the gaming space have not yet been noticed.

Last year for my fifth and final prediction I wrote:

“The Boiling Steam Twitter account will become inactive by the end of the year. Either Twitter will fold, or they will stop posting because the platform has become too awful.”

The Boiling Steam account is still posting on Twitter where they have 515 followers compared to Mastodon where they have 4.5k. I could claim a technicality on this one, arguing that Twitter is now, in fact, a whole different social media site called “X”, but I’ll leave that one to your judgement.