Valve Reveals Its the Architect Behind a Push To Bring Windows Games To Arm (theverge.com) 43
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge's Sean Hollister If you wrote off the Steam Frame as yet another VR headset few will want to wear, I guarantee you're not alone. But the Steam Frame isn't just a headset; it's a Trojan horse that contains the tech gamers need to play Steam games on the next Samsung Galaxy, the next Google Pixel, perhaps Arm gaming notebooks to come. I know, because I'm already using that tech on my Samsung Galaxy. There is no official Android version of Hollow Knight: Silksong, one of the best games of 2025, but that doesn't have to stop you anymore. Thanks to a stack of open-source technologies, including a compatibility layer called Proton and an emulator called Fex, games that were developed for x86-based Windows PCs can now run on Linux-based phones with the Arm processor architecture. With Proton, the Steam Deck could already do the Windows-to-Linux part; now, Fex is bridging x86 and Arm, too.
This stack is what powers the Steam Frame's own ability to play Windows games, of course, and it was widely reported that Valve is using the open-source Fex emulator to make it happen. What wasn't widely reported: Valve is behind Fex itself. In an interview, Valve's Pierre-Loup Griffais, one of the architects behind SteamOS and the Steam Deck, tells The Verge that Valve has been quietly funding almost all the open-source technologies required to play Windows games on Arm. And because they're open-source, Valve is effectively shepherding a future where Arm phones, laptops, and desktops could freely do the same. He says the company believes game developers shouldn't be wasting time porting games if there's a better way.
Remember when the Steam Deck handheld showed that a decade of investment in Linux could make Windows gaming portable? Valve paid open-source developers to follow their passions to help achieve that result. Valve has been guiding the effort to bring games to Arm in much the same way: In 2016 and 2017, Griffais tells me, the company began recruiting and funding open-source developers to bring Windows games to Arm chips. Fex lead developer Ryan Houdek tells The Verge he chatted with Griffais himself at conferences those years and whipped up the first prototype in 2018. He tells me Valve pays enough that Fex is his full-time job. "I want to thank the people from Valve for being here from the start and allowing me to kickstart this project," he recently wrote.
This stack is what powers the Steam Frame's own ability to play Windows games, of course, and it was widely reported that Valve is using the open-source Fex emulator to make it happen. What wasn't widely reported: Valve is behind Fex itself. In an interview, Valve's Pierre-Loup Griffais, one of the architects behind SteamOS and the Steam Deck, tells The Verge that Valve has been quietly funding almost all the open-source technologies required to play Windows games on Arm. And because they're open-source, Valve is effectively shepherding a future where Arm phones, laptops, and desktops could freely do the same. He says the company believes game developers shouldn't be wasting time porting games if there's a better way.
Remember when the Steam Deck handheld showed that a decade of investment in Linux could make Windows gaming portable? Valve paid open-source developers to follow their passions to help achieve that result. Valve has been guiding the effort to bring games to Arm in much the same way: In 2016 and 2017, Griffais tells me, the company began recruiting and funding open-source developers to bring Windows games to Arm chips. Fex lead developer Ryan Houdek tells The Verge he chatted with Griffais himself at conferences those years and whipped up the first prototype in 2018. He tells me Valve pays enough that Fex is his full-time job. "I want to thank the people from Valve for being here from the start and allowing me to kickstart this project," he recently wrote.
Re:Say no to emulation, bridges, etc. (Score:5, Insightful)
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The "OS/2 fallacy" is based on the idea the product failed because of Windows compatibility - mainly that developers were disinclined to develop native OS/2 programs and that tanked the OS. This is provably false (it was a popular feature), and the success of Steam is the rebuttal to this. OS/2 failed for a variety of reasons unrelated to this, mainly poor management, poor marketing and an "IBM culture" that wasn't conducive to developing a consumer-friendly prod
this (Score:2)
That worked so well for Loki (do you remember them?). What Valve is doing is bringing Windows APIs to Linux
This is entirely the thing. Loki games can or at least could be coaxed to work on Linux with Loki_Compat libraries, but last time I tried to run Alpha Centauri for Linux even that wouldn't work — and I'm even still using X. But add to that, the Linux versions of games are frequently inferior. The Loki games are included in that, for example in AlphaC for Linux you cannot ctrl-shift-a automate formers only near their supporting base. Fast forward to a more modern game like Civ VI, and there's a huge sl
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Make it Native. Always. I don't want translation lag eating up precious CPU cycles.
If you are running server workloads at scale, I'd agree. I don't consider the CPU cycles on my phone that precious though. If a game (or anything else) runs on it that would not otherwise run who am I to complain?
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Funny how if you look at the change log of proton, it's full of fixes for the "tricked-out crazy-straw-coded games". Which would suggest they're running anything but flawlessly.
https://github.com/ValveSoftwa... [github.com]
Re:Say no to emulation, bridges, etc. (Score:5, Insightful)
So your solution is to stamp your feet and expect the authors of every single game, ever, to go through the job of porting to the moving target of ARM platforms, so that you can juice out on that additional 2 frames per second?
How about companies that aren't even around any more? You gonna pay someone to do that, after wrangling up the rights?
Or, how about you just be happy that other people are solving the problem in the only way it can be possibly solved, and they're giving you more software availability than you had yesterday for no cost.
Good fucking lord you're an entitled asshole.
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This would be a valid argument if the dominant OS used for gaming wasn't such a mess.
On Steamdeck games run smoother on SteamOS + Proton than when you install Windows on it.
Re:Say no to emulation, bridges, etc. (Score:4, Insightful)
Make it Native. Always. I don't want translation lag eating up precious CPU cycles.
You don't have a choice of one or the other. You usually have a choice of one or nothing. Making native games for niche platforms is not worth the time and investment of developers.
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You don't have a choice of one or the other. You usually have a choice of one or nothing.
There is a middle ground. Apple and Qualcomm have released ARM CPUs with some hardware x86 translation like the entire Mx line up and the new Snapdragon X series chips.
Making native games for niche platforms is not worth the time and investment of developers.
I wouldn't call ARM a niche platform considering many consumers probably own more than one ARM device and fewer of them own an X86 device these days. Gaming is one of the last strongholds of X86 only software but with efforts like this, that may change.
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There is a middle ground. Apple and Qualcomm have released ARM CPUs with some hardware x86 translation like the entire Mx line up and the new Snapdragon X series chips.
Errr no. There are insanely minor hardware accelerations at play here. Virtually all of the translation on the M series is handled by Rosetta 2 - a software emulation layer.
I wouldn't call ARM a niche platform considering many consumers probably own more than one ARM device and fewer of them own an X86 device these days. Gaming is one of the last strongholds of X86 only software but with efforts like this, that may change.
Context matters, ARM gaming is insanely niche, far more niche than Linux gaming providing the context includes recognising that tapping on a touch screen is not "gaming". The reality is if you create a game you want to reach the target audience, that is Windows x86. Many people consider the border of "niche" to be some 15% of market adop
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Errr no. There are insanely minor hardware accelerations at play here. Virtually all of the translation on the M series is handled by Rosetta 2 - a software emulation layer.
By "minor", since the M1 was released, it routinely beats Intel machines even on x86 software. While the M series is handled by Rosetta, all M chips have some hardware translation. That is pretty much a fact you are unwilling to acknowledge.
Context matters, ARM gaming is insanely niche, far more niche than Linux gaming providing the context includes recognising that tapping on a touch screen is not "gaming".
Sure if your denialism wants to ignore that mobile gaming is twice as large as PC gaming [coopboardgames.com] in terms of revenue. In fact PC at 22% of the market would be considered "niche" compared to mobile and then consoles. Which processor does most mobile gaming support: ARM. How muc
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That is pretty much a fact you are unwilling to acknowledge.
No I was not unwilling to acknowledge it. You just can't read. I did acknowledge it. The fact is the M1 was a fantastic product and you seem to be unwilling to acknowledge that software emulation is actually insanely fucking fast.
Sure if your denialism wants to ignore that mobile gaming is twice as large as PC gaming [coopboardgames.com] in terms of revenue.
Precisely zero people here are talking about mobile gaming. Gaming is not something you do while taking a shit. Come back on topic.
Only in your No True Scotsman arguments and denialism.
I will admit to this one. It is No True Scotsman. And go fuck anyone with a rake who equates playing on your fucking phone to the gaming industry. Hint
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The fact is the M1 was a fantastic product and you seem to be unwilling to acknowledge that software emulation is actually insanely fucking fast.
That is a lie. The Mx series chips use both software AND hardware for emulation. Specifically Mx chips have memory assist circuitry that assist in translating x86 memory instructions. Rosetta 2 software is still needed to make it work but without the hardware, it would be slow and inefficient.
Your argument is that somehow Apple was one of the few to have "insanely fucking fast" software emulation for x86. Seriously? Of all the past open source and proprietary software attempts at x86 emulation, Apple just h
Re: Say no to emulation, bridges, etc. (Score:1)
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I question how much of an issue this is. CPUs have got fast - real fast.
Most of the time the CPU isn't the bottle neck in a "gaming rig." You limited on GPU which will still be doing native shader code. You are often limited on memory bandwidth, which translation of executable code probably has negligible impact on. Modern games are finally starting to parallelize more but again that pressures memory bandwidth and cache efficacy, leading to a lot idling anyway.
A few more MIPS is probably about the most aff
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While you are stuck running Windows due to this outdated mindset, Proton goes brrr on my Linux machine faster than yours.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming... [arstechnica.com]
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âoeItâ(TM)sâ not âoeItsâ? (Score:2)
Sorry to be pedantic but seeing this is like nails on a chalkboard to me
âoeItâ(TM)sâ is a contraction of âoeIt isâ. âoeItsâ is the possessive form of âoeitâ
I think this headline means to indicate that âoeValve Reveals [that it is] the Architect Behind a Push to Bring Windows Games to Armâ
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Someone start up the irony bilge pump! We're being flooded with irony!
Re: âoeItâ(TM)sâ not âoeIts (Score:2)
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At least they didn't say, "And because there open-source".
Thank you Valve!!! (Score:4)
p.s. How much is Deckard going to cost? Prepare to take my money!
Their long term stratety is one of a kind (Score:4, Insightful)
They've been working on FEX since 2016. So it will be 10 years of development before a commercial product using the tech is out. Their long term focus is really something I cannot see on any other big tech, they always look only to the short term to please investors. And the difference is paying. While every big tech is shoving AI down your throat on everything to get every penny they can before the bubble bursts (and BTW losing billions unless you are NVIDIA), Valve is once again revolutionizing PC gaming market and solidifying its core business.
What's the point though? (Score:2)
Re:What's the point though? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would have thought that these negate the reason for using ARM in the first place.
No one is promoting ARM for the purposes of emulating x86. The fact that some efficiency is lost while doing emulation has nothing to do with why a vendor is using ARM.
We've seen even Microsoft's own ARM laptops chug trying to emulate x86 software
Yes we've seen it chug, and we've seen it run well. There are wild performance differences between workloads. We've also seen Mac do the same thing, except better, eliminating the chug part and demonstrating that emulation is viable for day to day work as well.
Instead Valve should be encouraging games to use some kind of universal binary format, e.g. based on LLVM bitcode which can be compiled against the target platform / runtime prior to download
How? Not technically, but from a business point of view. How do you convince people to change their practices for a niche use case that will generate fuck-all in product sales? Maybe this is actually their end goal, but emulation has to be the stepping stone or the entire industry will write you off not so much as an "also-ran" but a "never-started".
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How? Not technically, but from a business point of view.
From a technical point of view, you can also ask why would you ever make your compiler target LLVM bitcode. There are better options.
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They are probably hoping that developers start releasing ARM native versions once Steam Machine sales start to take off. This will be aimed at older games where the developer is unlikely to go back and rebuild for ARM, and performance isn't too critical.
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Why would a developer bother to optimize their game? That's actually a good question, given some of the recent releases.
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I would guess the point is that eventually games are available for more than just Windows. Because Microsoft has been trying for better part of decade to make their own "games store/app store" to compete with Valve. Down to making editions of OS where you couldn't even install software from outside Microsoft's own store. They're really trying to lock down the OS without losing most of the customers.
And while it has been failing miserably so far, the writing is on the wall and Valve would be smart to push so
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We've seen even Microsoft's own ARM laptops chug trying to emulate x86 software
Using the word "even" here implies that we would expect Microsoft to be competent, but no one with experience with Microsoft expects that.
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Microsoft's effort is about as competent as it can be in that it's seamless and *most* things sort of work. However *most* is not the same as *all* which is what people expect when they run Windows.
Again, people with no experience maybe.
I'm already playing x86 games on ARM (Score:5, Informative)
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Yeah, and box86 or box64 (+ winlator) already work on arm (+ android phones) for ages...
Nope (Score:2)
If you wrote off the Steam Frame as yet another VR headset few will want to wear, I guarantee you're not alone.
I always wait until I know of something's existence before I consider writing it off.
So, the opposite of Ingress NGINX? (Score:2)
An open-source project many depended upon, maintained by employees of Kubernetes, and dropped because neither Kubernetes nor anyone else wanted to fund it. And here is an open-source project people may come to depend upon, maintained by not a Steam employee, but fully funded by Steam because they recognize they, and others, will need it.
Is Steam the better company?