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:
Take a chill dude. Don’t use it if you don’t find it useful. You don’t have to question its existence lol.
And about Proton being a product of Valve doesn’t matter when it’s open source—anyone can fork it and continue development (Proton itself is a fork of wine). It’s just if Linux becomes the default for everyone, Valve can enshitify themselves just like any other corporation and thus maybe not allow 3rd party installations or even add a Steam Shortcut. It is great for what it is now but I won’t put all my eggs in one basket; least of all a corpo basket.