Valve Testing ARM64 Support for Steam Gaming Platform, Android Expansion Possible Too

[AleksandarK]

Gaming giant Valve appears to be venturing into uncharted territory. Recent findings on SteamDB have revealed that the company may be working on integrating ARM architecture and Android app support into its ecosystem. A mysterious application, codenamed "ValveTestApp3043620," has been spotted with an update that includes interesting changes. The update features new tags for several popular games, including Left 4 Dead 2, Garry's Mod, and Kerbal Space Program. These tags, such as "proton-arm64" and "proton-arm64e," indicate that Valve is testing a version of Proton specifically designed for ARM64-based systems. Proton, Valve's brainchild developed in partnership with CodeWeavers, is the magic behind running Windows games on Linux systems. By extending this technology to ARM64, Valve could be paving the way for PC gaming on portable Arm-based devices, potentially signaling a new hardware strategy.

The plot thickens with mentions of "proton_experimental" and "proton-arm64ec-vanguard" in the changelog, hinting at ongoing tests and experimental builds. Additionally, references to Waydroid, a tool enabling Android apps on Linux, suggest that Valve's ambitions may extend beyond gaming, possibly aiming to broaden software accessibility of its platform. This development has sparked speculation about the possibility of Steam games running on Android smartphones and tablets or even a possible Arm-powered version of the Steam Deck. However, a more likely scenario could be testing for Windows support on Arm-based chips. The timing of these experiments aligns with recent announcements of laptops featuring Qualcomm's ARM64-based Snapdragon X CPUs. These devices can run Windows-based games through Microsoft and Qualcomm's emulation layer, Prism. If Valve's Proton can provide superior performance or more stable emulation for Windows-based games on Arm devices, it could position itself as a strong competitor to Prism.



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[john_]

Mediatek SoC with Nvidia iGPU.
At AMD they are about to start hitting their heads on the wall, realizing that sleeping because "intel is still behind" wasn't a good idea.
AMD needs a specific SoC for handheld devices with 6-8 Zen4c/Zen5c cores and at least 20 RDNA 3.5+ CUs with a little extra Infinity cache to offer best possible performance.

 

[ncrs]

It should be mentioned that Proton is based on a fork of the Wine project which implements Windows APIs for running Windows software under other operating systems like Linux.
Wine already supports experimentally running under Android on ARM hardware, but it's not capable of running x86/AMD64 programs on its own. Only ARM Windows programs can be used.
In order to allow running x86/AMD64 games under ARM there needs to be another compatibility layer added, like Prism mentioned in the news. For Linux one can use QEMU for binary translation or other projects like Box86/Box64.
It will be interesting to see which way Valve will go. Their contributions to gaming under Linux and general improvements to its graphical stack have been substantial.

 

[igormp]

Valve has been sponsoring Fex's development for quite a while, and they also hired many of the folks that were working on ARM graphics part of the Linux kernel.

Apart from what was mentioned, another possibility is that this is meant for their Deckard product (supposed new VR headset).

 

[clopezi]

This also can be good news for Apple Silicon owners

 

[Dr. Dro]

How about make the Steam Client for Windows something just a little better than a steaming (pun intended) heap? Ever since browser became mandated (as in, the old backend was removed), Steam is just bloat

 

[Onasi]

@Dr. Dro
I don’t know which is sadder - that you are absolutely correct or the fact that Steam is still the better client of those we have. It’s not great, but after the “we will totally improve it” GoG Galaxy and the numerous questionable decisions of EGS (at least it stopped launching the UDK in the background for no reason) Steam seems not that bad. Then just yesterday it decided to completely hand on me in the Shop because the shitty Electron backend decided to die for no reason and the illusion quickly disappeared.