No sound on Steam and Steam games in Kubuntu 22.10

I installed steam (via apt-get) on my Kubuntu 22.10 64 bit (HP Envy laptop), but there is no sound or music coming out (either from the steam client or the game "Star Conflict").

I had no previous issues with the sound in my system and everything else is working/sounding fine.

Also the Steam client and the games work well, other than the sound...

Any ideas??

Btw. I see that there might be some incompatibility issues wrt PipeWire used in 22.10 (see links here and here. I have to say these goes a bit beyond my technical skills! However I tired creating a symlink suggested in the first link, but it didn't help (if I did it correct :D).

FYI, these are the steam packages that were installed:

steam/kinetic,now 1:1.0.0.74-1ubuntu2 i386 [installed,automatic]
Valve's Steam digital software delivery system

steam-devices/kinetic,kinetic,now 1:1.0.0.74-1ubuntu2 all [installed,automatic]
Device support for Steam-related hardware

steam-installer/kinetic,kinetic,now 1.0.0.74-1ubuntu2 all [installed]
Installer for Valve's Steam digital software delivery system

FYI,

~$ sudo fuser -v /dev/snd/*
                     USER        PID ACCESS COMMAND
/dev/snd/controlC0:  user1    2327 F.... wireplumber
/dev/snd/controlC1:  user1    2327 F.... wireplumber
/dev/snd/seq:        user1    2326 F.... pipewire

FYI, Steam's systemaudiomanager.txt logged:

[2022-12-28 20:32:32] Initialized system audio manager: default

I will admit to not fully checking this out yet. I have the same issue you are having, for native Linux games on Ubuntu 22.10 in Steam. This issue Windows games under Proton work fine. Have been using this system for years (updating every 6 months) and these games have worked in prior versions.

To the point: I would imagine that you may have multiple audio devices on your system. I think what is happening, is that Steam is sending audio to the wrong device. On my system, e.g., my video card shows up as a sound device. However, my monitors have no speakers and are connected via DisplayPort, rather than HDMI. When playing a Windows/Proton game, there is always a slight pop in my speakers when the game begins. This doesn't happen w/ the native games, probably because a different audio source is being grabbed.

If I were to blacklist the other audio devices, I think my problem would be solved. At this point, I am playing mostly Proton games and am content to see if the issue is fixed in 23.04, and I know you already found a workaround, but if you ever use the .deb Steam again, this may be worth looking into.