When Valve revealed the Steam Machine and Steam Frame last month, it willingly opened itself up to a slew of questions, with one standing out above the tide: Steam emulation on ARM-based devices, as was quietly demonstrated with the Frame.
In an interview with The Verge, Pierre-Loup Griffais, one of the architects behind SteamOS and the Steam Deck, said that Valve has been quietly funding all open-source technologies required to play Windows games on ARM. One prime example of these technologies is Proton, which does Windows-to-Linux and is what powers both the Deck and Machine. The other is Fex, which is what was supposedly used in the demonstration of the Steam Frame to attending media at the time.
To point out the obvious, Fex differs from Proton in that it is designed and built to act as a translation layer between ARM and x86 architecture. In other words, it’s a Windows-to-ARM layer that allowed the Steam Frame to run games directly from an ARM-based mobile device to the headset. On that note, Valve is reportedly the one that is fully funding the development of Fex.
Ryan Houdek, lead developer of Fex, told The Verge that he first began development of the translation layer in 2018 and after he showed it to Valve, they paid him enough that it is now his full-time job.
Why Steam On ARM?
This may not seem like a big deal to the majority, but look at it this way. Yes, there is currently a way for you to stream your Steam library to your mobile device, and that is through the Steam Link app. Note, though, that it is streaming, and not natively running your games on your mobile devices, and that means that you are at the mercy of two elements. The first is the strength, speed, and stability of your internet. Basically, if you’re internet is crap, then your streaming experience is obviously going to be crap too.
The second is your gaming PC. The entire experience is basically tethered to your rig, and because you’re streaming the content to your mobile device, you are effectively playing whatever game you are remotely, with the PC running in the background. So, if the PC is off or if the internet is just bad, there just won’t be a remote gaming session.
With ARM, Valve may be trying to democratise Steam gaming by allowing users to run their entire library natively on an ARM-powered mobile device or laptop. The question we have for this application, though, is whether a hardware requirement will still be in place, given that some games require the oomph that only a CPU and GPU combo can provide.
It’s still early days for Valve and its “Steam on ARM” ambitions, but it will be interesting to see if Lord Gaben and his company will be able to pull it off. “We don’t really try to steer the market one direction or another; we just want to make sure that good options are always supported.”
(Source: The Verge)
