https://www.nexusmods.com/news/15433 As we move into 2026, Vortex is shifting back to the centre of our development roadmap. While we have spent the last couple of years exploring new territory with the Nexus Mods App, we have decided to consolidate our efforts and bring all that innovation directly into Vortex. Over 1.4 million modders use Vortex every month to mod their games, and we’re committed to improving their modding experience.
Our plans for the year include a steady, iterative modernisation of the Vortex user experience. We’ll be investing in the developer experience, which will allow us to focus on quality-of-life improvements, specifically streamlining navigation, simplifying game management, and introducing more intuitive controls for load orders. You can expect the interface to become cleaner and more responsive as we integrate the design lessons learned from our recent projects. Our goal is to make modding more accessible and reliable without disrupting the workflows that long-time Vortex users have come to rely on.
We’re also committing to supporting Vortex on SteamOS. We’ll be targeting vanilla Steam hardware like the Steam Deck and Steam Machine. We won’t be officially supporting any other configurations, but as Vortex is an open source project community developers will be free to extend support for their preferred Linux distros as they please.
Here’s an early proof of concept (subject to change) of the updated Vortex navigation:
I read this news as: "The Linux proof of concept has graduated and will be merged into the main app".
Nah, its more like they spent a year or two trying to figure out how to actually support linux, and disastrously failed, and the new plan is 'let proton handle it'.
They spent a few years trying to make a linux piece of software, ... and have totally abandoned it as a failure, and are now just saying the new plan is to... make the old app ... do the thing ... that they initially started the project of the new app to do ... because they could not figure out how to make the old app do it.
... Uh huh.
They're claiming they're going to support SteamOS and also the hardware of a SteamDeck or SteamMachine.
This makes no sense.
Blam, I'm running Bazzite on my Deck or Machine... does their new idea of Vortex work on that?
Does it... only work on SteamOS, so... its... gonna be a flatpak?
If its gonna be a flatpak, it would work on nearly any linux OS, so why say its only targetting SteamOS?
Or... will it require you going into SteamOS, manually disabling the thing that by default prevents you from fucking with the core read only by default OS, and setting up custom Arch packages from the AUR, or will they have you do a fully manual install?
None of what they have said actually makes any sense.
Conclusion: They're utterly incompetent with all things linux and have no idea what they are even talking about, much less how to create actual linux software.
Meanwhile Limo does 90% of what you need a native linux mod manager version of a Nexus app to do, has done so for 2 years now, and is free for them to fork.
But they're not doing that.
... they're morons.
NexusMods is to mods as CrunchyRoll is to anime.
Supporting only SteamOS doesn't mean it can't run on other options, just that they aren't going to help you if you encounter issues as a result of using said other option.
Do you have any experience using Arch, SteamOS, Flatpak, or just... linux in general?
Because now also what you have said makes no sense.
I've already explained why.
Here's the thing: the new app did work on Linux. It only supported a few games, but it worked. I can't understand why they're abandoning it. Are the new owners just wanting to continue Vortex because it's more recognizable?
Also, Vortex does work already, just not very well. It's a pain in the ass on Linux, but it can be ran through WINE, on the same prefix as the game you're modding, and can do the job. It gives warnings and it doesn't handle clicking the download button from the website (you have to paste the URL into the app's download menu), but it functions. Is this the bare minimum they are going to keep and just throw their hands up and say "it works"?