Support NeoGAF

[IbizaPocholo]

Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games, sparking speculations about new future hardware

Valve seems to be testing ARM64 and Android support on Steam, as per a new SteamDB leak. Popular titles like Left 4 Dead 2 and Garry's Mod are being tested with "proton-arm64" tags, among others. This could hint towards new future Valve hardware running on ARM64 architecture.

www.notebookcheck.net

Valve seems to be testing ARM64 and Android support on Steam, as per a new SteamDB leak. Popular titles like Left 4 Dead 2 and Garry's Mod are being tested with "proton-arm64" tags, among others. This could hint towards new future Valve hardware running on ARM64 architecture.

Valve seems to be exploring new ways to upgrade its ecosystem, with recent clues pointing towards the integration of ARM64 architecture and Android app support. A new update with app ID 3043620 spotted on SteamDB for an unknown application, codenamed "ValveTestApp3043620," includes key changes that reveal this info.

The update lists several popular games, such as Left 4 Dead 2, Garry’s Mod, Kerbal Space Program, and Shadow of Mordor, which now feature "proton-arm64" and "proton-arm64e" tags, among other tags like "proton-arm64ec". There are also some other tags such as "proton_experimental" and "proton-arm64ec-vanguard", most likely referring to experimental builds still in testing. These tags indicate Valve is actively testing a version of Proton—the software that allows Windows games to run on Linux—designed specifically for ARM64-based systems. The compatibility layer is developed by Valve in cooperation with developers from CodeWeavers.

 

[Radical_3d]

Launch Steam on M1+ iPads.That’d be killer.

 

[Barakov]

Broke : Release LCD Steam Deck
Woke : Release OLED Steam Deck
Bespoke : Have Other Companies Release Steam Decks Using Your OS so you can learn from their mistakes and release the penultimate Steam Deck 2 later

 

[Griffon]

Seems likely that Valve will end up with a better ARM compatibility with x86 Windows apps than the ARM version of Windows itself.

 

[Bojanglez]

It would open up more opportunities on almost all modern Apple devices, so it makes sense just from that perspective.

I imagine this would just help some kind of push for Steam to eventually become a proper store on all mobile devices, now that those markets are opening up due to regulation changes.

Also like the OP mentioned it future proofs them if there is a wider shift towards Arm generally and they wanted to do their own Arm based devices.

 

[T-Cake]

I'm thinking the next Xbox (console + handheld) are ARM64. And Microsoft will allow Valve to put Steam on it so they can have the entire Steam library available as well as their own marketplace.

 

[El Muerto]

AMD has an ARM chip with the codename Sound Wave which is likely releasing in 2026. No doubt that the next Steam Deck will be using it. I'm sure the Xbox handheld will too. Windows already has a compatiblity layer for X86 to ARM.

 

[Buggy Loop]

Valve's Deckard seems like it will be ARM based too





Coming really soon I bet

 

[Crayon]

The last piece of the puzzle. A device could have no windows, no x86, no keyboard, no upgradability, and everyone would still call it "pc". This is the longest con in gaming history and I love it.

 

[M1chl]

I'm thinking the next Xbox (console + handheld) are ARM64. And Microsoft will allow Valve to put Steam on it so they can have the entire Steam library available as well as their own marketplace.

inshallah with Nvidia SoC as AMD does not have any of that in stock

The last piece of the puzzle. A device could have no windows, no x86, no keyboard, no upgradability, and everyone would still call it "pc". This is the longest con in gaming history and I love it.

1) Windows has ARM64 version
2) You can plug a keyboard
3) There is nothing preventing having expandable storage and RAM, just its not really common link to an example

 

[64bitmodels]

this would be cool but keep arm out of the Deck 2 for the time being. We just got over the Linux compatibility hurdle and i'm not ready to immediately try and solve ARM to X86 compatibility problems on top of that.

 

[ReBurn]

Proton on ARM would be pretty cool. Let's make everything compatible with everything

 

[simpatico]

Matter of time before PC gaming goes to ARM.

 

[YuLY]

Matter of time before PC gaming goes to ARM.

Never gonna happen for me. It will create compatibility problems, I havent built a library of games for decades just so I can make most of them unplayable due to some specs that apparently saves some power? couldnt care less.

And before someone says they will be compatible, ye right, I have tons of folders with patches/fixes/dlls for games just from the move from Win 7 to Win 10, I cant imagine what this will do.

 

[64bitmodels]

The last piece of the puzzle. A device could have no windows, no x86, no keyboard, no upgradability, and everyone would still call it "pc". This is the longest con in gaming history and I love it.

The simple requirement is if you can do anything on it without jailbreaking

can you make music, search the web, edit videos, etc without a jailbreak? if so, it's a PC. The Deck can do all of that so it's a PC enough.

laptops are also PCs just portable ones

a lot of the time the difference between a console and PC comes down to the OS and what it allows you to do/what it was purpose built for.

 

[simpatico]

Never gonna happen for me. It will create compatibility problems, I havent built a library of games for decades just so I can make most of them unplayable due to some specs that apparently saves some power? couldnt care less.

And before someone says they will be compatible, ye right, I have tons of folders with patches/fixes/dlls for games just from the move from Win 7 to Win 10, I cant imagine what this will do.

If I had to guess, x86 emulation would take care of 90% of beloved classic titles. There will for sure be some that fall through the cracks, but thems the ropes.

 

[Crayon]

The simple requirement is if you can do anything on it without jailbreaking

can you make music, search the web, edit videos, etc without a jailbreak? if so, it's a PC. The Deck can do all of that so it's a PC enough.

laptops are also PCs just portable ones

a lot of the time the difference between a console and PC comes down to the OS and what it allows you to do/what it was purpose built for.

Android phones?

 

[64bitmodels]

Android phones?

thats a fair point

i make the distinction bcz of android's lack of comparable software library but they are more similar than i thought

 

[Crayon]

thats a fair point

i make the distinction bcz of android's lack of comparable software library but they are more similar than i thought

That's what I like about this. "PC" has been a more limited definition than literal personal computing devices. I want to see that opened up to include anything that fit your definition up there.

It's just a weird thing semantically, because once you can launch steam and play all, or most, of your library on a phone, it's going to be a little confusing whether we call that PC gaming or not.

 

[64bitmodels]

That's what I like about this. "PC" has been a more limited definition than literal personal computing devices. I want to see that opened up to include anything that fit your definition up there.

It's just a weird thing semantically, because once you can launch steam and play all, or most, of your library on a phone, it's going to be a little confusing whether we call that PC gaming or not.

well i guess when everything can be played on everything we are going to have to retire the terms we use to seperate gaming on different devices.

PC, Console, handheld, mobile, arcade, all had their terms because they all had their own different shares of games that were tailor made to each platform. but when everything can play everything can we really say that there's a point to categorizing all of them when they basically do the same thing?

by the time we ever get to the point of an android or iphone being able to play every game on steam i think we will not really have much of a need to categorize these types of games.

It also gets major AAA titles on phone far more efficiently than the IOS port strategy apple/Capcom tried with Resident Evil. Since it's basically just the steam deck approach of "put it on our store and we will get it running on every device you can imagine with 0 effort from you guys through translation software alone" which is such a forward thinking and genius idea lol

 

[cartman414]

Matter of time before PC gaming goes to ARM.

Will it rival x86 at higher power envelopes/speeds?

 

[Trogdor1123]

Is the only real difference between arm and x86 that arm doesn’t have all the legacy stuff built into it? Or is there some other big difference?

 

[Dacvak]

Launch Steam on M1+ iPads.That’d be killer.

Damn, I never realized how badly I would want this. And Apple keeps saying the iPad is a notebook replacement, so they should nut up and allow Steam on the App Store.

 

[Lord Panda]

Launch Steam on M1+ iPads.That’d be killer.

iPad M1 is still ridiculously overpowered for most tasks.

 

[Hugare]

So there's a chance of installing Steam OS on phones in the future? Android?

'Cause if so, hoo boy. Valve would be drowning in even more money.

Imagine running Steam on your phone

 

[decisions]

Wow, would be cool if this kills two birds with one stone by optimizing games for Apple and Valve’s hardware at the same time.

 

[Nikodemos]

So there's a chance of installing Steam OS on phones in the future? Android?

'Cause if so, hoo boy. Valve would be drowning in even more money.

Imagine running Steam on your phone

It would also start an arms race among those Chinese handheld manufacturers, to put more powerful mobile chips in their devices. Currently only two of them offer handhelds with Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 or higher.

 

[Radical_3d]

Damn, I never realized how badly I would want this. And Apple keeps saying the iPad is a notebook replacement, so they should nut up and allow Steam on the App Store.

iPad M1 is still ridiculously overpowered for most tasks.

Fun fact. I have an under powered Air 4 and I’ve spend most of my hours of Civilization VI there. Yeah, no mods and slower interface, but bed gaming is king, and was my solution when the missus got the computer busy.

 

[Trilobit]

iPad M1 is still ridiculously overpowered for most tasks.

I have one and relly like it, but at times it feels like driving a Ferrari at maximum speed of 70km/h because of iPadOS.

 

[old-parts]

All this does is add a native Arm version of proton for linux which is better for performance/ease of deployment but I don't think anyone should read too much into this like "Arm Steam Deck is coming".

On a linux Arm system you must still use a translation layer like FEX-Emu to be able to install and run x86 Steam, that the proton layer is Arm native will help performance but its still x86 software.

There can also be huge performance hits on titles that use x86 AVX instructions that most Arm hardware has no direct equivalent for though it does exist, Arm's 256 bit SVE is rare to most Arm CPU's, even Qualcomm/Apple's newest chips don't have it.

Lastly the state of driver for GPU's common to Arm systems that can run Linux;
* Qualcomm Adreno - pretty good but the latest hardware takes time to be added (no Snapdragon Elite X support), driver development not done by Qualcomm.
* Arm Mali - decent support but only on the older stuff, Arm's own product line is 2 generations ahead of what the driver supports, driver development not done by Arm.
* ImgTech PowerVR - recently began open source driver development, not yet useable but has company support.
* Apple - Mx GPU driver is in very good shape, possibly ready for regular users at end of the year, driver development not done by Apple.

So the choice of hardware isn't really that great or would make sense for an Arm Steam Deck which would really need an AMD GPU paired with an Arm CPU and the benefits would be dubious in a handheld.

Some of the Chinese hand held makers might push out something Arm linux compatible but it will really only run old or simple games.

 

[TrebleShot]

All this does is add a native Arm version of proton for linux which is better for performance/ease of deployment but I don't think anyone should read too much into this like "Arm Steam Deck is coming".

On a linux Arm system you must still use a translation layer like FEX-Emu to be able to install and run x86 Steam, that the proton layer is Arm native will help performance but its still x86 software.

There can also be huge performance hits on titles that use x86 AVX instructions that most Arm hardware has no direct equivalent for though it does exist, Arm's 256 bit SVE is rare to most Arm CPU's, even Qualcomm/Apple's newest chips don't have it.

Lastly the state of driver for GPU's common to Arm systems that can run Linux;
* Qualcomm Adreno - pretty good but the latest hardware takes time to be added (no Snapdragon Elite X support), driver development not done by Qualcomm.
* Arm Mali - decent support but only on the older stuff, Arm's own product line is 2 generations ahead of what the driver supports, driver development not done by Arm.
* ImgTech PowerVR - recently began open source driver development, not yet useable but has company support.
* Apple - Mx GPU driver is in very good shape, possibly ready for regular users at end of the year, driver development not done by Apple.

So the choice of hardware isn't really that great or would make sense for an Arm Steam Deck which would really need an AMD GPU paired with an Arm CPU and the benefits would be dubious in a handheld.

Some of the Chinese hand held makers might push out something Arm linux compatible but it will really only run old or simple games.

Yeah your right, they are just doing this because they are bored.

 

[spons]

All this does is add a native Arm version of proton for linux which is better for performance/ease of deployment but I don't think anyone should read too much into this like "Arm Steam Deck is coming".

On a linux Arm system you must still use a translation layer like FEX-Emu to be able to install and run x86 Steam, that the proton layer is Arm native will help performance but its still x86 software.

There can also be huge performance hits on titles that use x86 AVX instructions that most Arm hardware has no direct equivalent for though it does exist, Arm's 256 bit SVE is rare to most Arm CPU's, even Qualcomm/Apple's newest chips don't have it.

Lastly the state of driver for GPU's common to Arm systems that can run Linux;
* Qualcomm Adreno - pretty good but the latest hardware takes time to be added (no Snapdragon Elite X support), driver development not done by Qualcomm.
* Arm Mali - decent support but only on the older stuff, Arm's own product line is 2 generations ahead of what the driver supports, driver development not done by Arm.
* ImgTech PowerVR - recently began open source driver development, not yet useable but has company support.
* Apple - Mx GPU driver is in very good shape, possibly ready for regular users at end of the year, driver development not done by Apple.

So the choice of hardware isn't really that great or would make sense for an Arm Steam Deck which would really need an AMD GPU paired with an Arm CPU and the benefits would be dubious in a handheld.

Some of the Chinese hand held makers might push out something Arm linux compatible but it will really only run old or simple games.

The entire reason Proton was subsidized by Valve is the Steam Deck. There's absolutely something ARM coming from them.

 

[SportsFan581]

Steam on Android would be an interesting concept. I wonder how long until we get phones that dock to your TV or monitor.

 

[RoboFu]

so IOS and Android translation layers. nice.

 

[Nikodemos]

Steam on Android would be an interesting concept. I wonder how long until we get phones that dock to your TV or monitor.

They'd likely run very poorly due to thermal throttling. All of the more powerful mobile devices (handhelds), which are capable of high sustained output, have active cooling systems (heatsink+fan).

 

[Bojanglez]

Launch Steam on M1+ iPads.That’d be killer.

You can do this (with varying results) now on M chip Macs using Whisky (similar to Proton as it is part based on WINE).