It’s the early hours of January 2022 as I get to my keyboard to write the first few words on Boiling Steam in the new year. Let’s start with a quick recap of what happened in 2021 on our end:

• We have published 151 articles overall in 2021, compared to 95 in 2020 (158% index).
• We have made the headlines for a few times during the year, most noticeably after our interview with James Ramey where we were the first to confirm that despite Valve’s earlier claims, the Steam Deck would probably not play all games out of the box in the Steam library. This story was linked in major publications, including Rock Paper Shotgun, PCGamer, and GameSpot, and is probably the first time that Boiling Steam has reached so much publicity.
• Our growth on alternative social networks has been great. On Mastodon we had less than 500 followers in early 2021 to 1,350 today (and still growing at a steady pace week after week). We don’t have much of a reach on Twitter but if you do use that network you can also follow us there. We also have a news channel on telegram, @boilingsteam, if that is your thing.
• We have also opened our Matrix channel and while there’s not always a lot of discussions going on, we have great people there.
  • This is how we met Grazenn (Adam Adamou) who is a key management member of OverActive Media, which led us to talk about the phenomenon of Esports. We also have frostworx who is the excellent developer of SteamTinkerLauncher (a tool we always recommend without hesitation if you use Proton or alternative Proton versions with Steam).
• We have published numerous articles about the Linux gaming community following the survey we have conducted in Q2 2021, covering a wide range of topics. If you are looking for numbers about Linux gamers this should prove to be one of the best sources out there.
• We have moved to a weekly newsletter format, with a lot more content that just our latest stories. You also get selected news from the Linux and FOSS world, and a few game sales that should be worth checking out.
• We have launched a Wiki to better organize our recent and past content and make it easier to find.
• We have published more video content (–– compare vs 2020) both on PeerTube and YouTube to reach a larger audience as well.
• We have launched a subreddit where you can find our content and some interesting links we come across. We recently had our 150th member join us!

And last but not least, we have done the above with zero ads, because ads suck, and user tracking through ads is even worse. We appreciate your support on Patreon and Liberapay - every bit counts to keep us motivated!

Boiling Steam is already a reference in the world of Linux gaming, and you can count on us in becoming even better this year!