The same roadblock has existed for ARM PCs as Linux PC - the mountain of legacy stuff that only runs on x86 Windows. Which is something Steam’s Proton has directly addressed.
Now that they’ve wrapped legacy software in an OS compatibility layer (Wine/Proton) and that is being wrapped in an instruction set compatibility layer (FEX) that mountain of software is ready to roll!
Best part is, valve’s contributions are virtually all being pushed upstream, meaning unrelated projects will all benefit from the work.
2026 - Year of the
LinuxReactOS desktop!I hope they make arm Steam available for all devices and oses.
Like macos arm Windows arm And Linux armARM is so hot right now.
Seriously, consumer devices are all slowly moving in that direction. Valve sees where things are going.
Have you considered adding a heatsink? Maybe a fan??
i am a fan
Stuff like this is the main reason why I only buy from Steam if I can help it. GOG has a noble anti-DRM goal, but Valve is doing a lot more stuff that matters. Besides, I count Steam’s apathy towards their own easily-bypassed DRM as effectively DRM-free at this point, and as far as I understand Steam’s DRM is also voluntary for game devs to use.
GOG does game preservation, which is nice.
I wish they’d align more at least on the Linux issue. What’s the use of preserving games for an OS that’s not going to last? It seems antithetical to their goals. Meanwhile, Wine and the rest of the Linux emulation components are also doing real work for preserving games by just making their original releases continue to work on modern operating systems through translation layers. My guess is GOG is waiting for gaming on Linux to be “worth it” before devoting their time and effort into it, which is basically just being a fair-weather friend and not actually helping.
They do the good that they do. Is there a minimal amount of good one must do to be promoted from “fair-weather friend”? GOG is not a behemoth like Valve, they have to pick their fights more carefully. Also, they are preserving the games for the vast majority of people, on the platform those games were designed for. And since Proton/Wine progress is going well, the games are by extension preserved on other OSes.
Isn’t GOG part of CD Projekt? Not a behemoth like Valve, but not a small fish either.
I would say the bare minimum is supporting their game client on Linux. They don’t need to be supporting project developments like Valve, but at least giving a token gesture that they recognize and are doing their part for this issue would be a nice gesture to the gamers who feel that anti-DRM/game preservation and a future with Linux are very correlated - regardless of Linux’s present-day state. By not having their game client available on Linux they have actively hindered the growth of Linux, and only through Valve’s support are we getting closer to that future (as well as the Linux community who have eventually made their own GOG clients due to the lack of official support).
They have been making a willful choice to not use any of their money to support Linux, which has been clear for many years by the GOG users overwhelmingly asking for Linux support to no avail. Their Linux game installers are the bare minimum of using someone else’s setup installer. I’m saying that if I’m going to be giving money to somebody, I’d rather give it to a company that’s doing more with it and seems to have a stronger belief in actually making the effort to achieve this future instead of waiting for it to happen by someone else’s hand.
You are free to support or not support whoever you see fit. If supporting Linux is hard requirement for you, so be it. But in my personal opinion, they do deserve support, in the very least because they sell most of their games DRM-free, giving consumer the ability to keep their games forever.
Valve has been secretly funding Fex, an open-source project to bring Windows games to ARM, for almost a decade
In this age of leaks and industry insider speculation I’m very impressed they’ve kept this under wraps for so long
They have not. I can‘t provide you the link, but it was long speculated that they are working on an ARM device. Also you cannot really hide activity in an open source project. It was just not officially communicated that these changes have been funded by Valve.
You cant hide the activity but you can hide the contributors and/or the funding.
Sure it’s been speculated, but if there were obvious signs like commits in the fex repos by valve employees then wouldn’t there have been more than speculation?
I knew they were finding FEX… But for a decade!? Holy
2015 is now a decade ago 🤷
Arm Steamdeck? Sign me up! Arm on Linux ftw. I also have high hopes for the snapdragon x elite 2 to finally push me off macOS. Tangent on that I saw some reddit thread (yeah yeah reddit) and it mentioned that x elite 2 might support dgpus everyone said “but why though”? Well the answer is so that you can disable it and have killer battery life and then just enable it later for performance. Why wouldn’t everyone want that?
I’m guessing something about PSP sized because they have their Android Linux emulator project ongoing too
I’m confused - isn’t the Steam Frame ARM based, and using FEX? The article talks about future devices but doesn’t mention the big new device that will be using FEX in 2026?
I wonder why isn’t box86 and box64 used instead
box86 is younger than FEX i think? maybe it’s just that when they decided to fund FEX box86 didn’t exist yet?
I think the article is working off the assumption that readers already know that the Steam Frame uses ARM. Basically, it’s gonna be a testing platform for things to come.
I’ve seen ARM64 in action firsthand in the new Macbooks. The energy efficiency especially is off the charts. Since battery life was the Steam Deck’s greatest flaw, chances are an ARM architecture version can squeeze a lot more juice out of the same battery size in the future.
Was is biggest flaw? Have you SEEN the other options out there for handhelds? Everyone craps on SD because it feels underpowered, and it kind of is, but watt for watt you get more performance than machines costing several times its price.
The SD is an absolute beast in its class, battery life being best in class, compared to what everyone else is doing.
Though I agree, for heavy loads, it’s not quite enough for proper mobile use. Even better battery life would be preferred, and ARM can hopefully bring that.
Oh I agree completely. There are many “more powerful” devices out there, but very few people actually prefer them if they’ve used a Steam Deck before. And its battery life is fine for what it is, but it would be awesome if it was twice as much.
Valve phone? I don’t really want an arm steam deck. It’s important to me I be able to run stuff outside of games on my deck. It’s not just a handheld, it’s a full fledged pc in a handheld body.
But if they want to make a valve phone with a Linux based os…
You do realise that the same runtime that makes x86 games work on ARM, will also work for… drumroll please… regular software too?
Uh no.
Not the kinds of things I need to be able to do. There simply isn’t the support. Taken a ridiculous amount of time to get even basic support to do the kinds of things I need to be able to do on AMD hardware.
Tell me you haven’t even tried Fex without telling me.
The whole point of FEX is running x86 applications on ARM. Much like WINE, it won’t be limited to games.
Valve phone? Nah. I’ll be surprised if you’re not able to run x86 Windows games using the Steam Android app though. You already can with GameNative and GameHub anyway.
