Valve Engineer Confirms Plan To Run Steam Windows Games On Arm & Even Phones
The Fex project has been in the works for nearly a decade and Valve has been funding it since the beginning, alongside convincing open source developers to contribute to the effort. Fex’s lead developer, Ryan Houdek, shared that thanks to the company’s focus on the project, he was able to get it off the ground back in 2018 and that it’s currently his full time job.
Fex, like Proton, is a compatibility layer that serves to translate x86 code to something an Arm chip can process readily. There are usually performance concerns when doing these kinds of code translations, but Griffais notes that because of how Fex works in conjunction with Proton, only “code that’s owned by the game itself” needs to be emulated. This should mean a negligible difference in performance compared to what you’ll get with an x86 native system.
Griffais believes that Arm based devices that provide better value at lower performance levels than the Steam Deck will benefit the most from Fex. However, he mentions that there’s potential for Arm in the desktop market, too, with devices such as the Framework Desktop that utilize an SoC. Ultimately, Valve plans to “keep greasing the wheels, so to speak, so that SteamOS can work on a wider variety of Arm devices,” according to Griffais.
The most exciting aspect of Fex is that Windows games will be playable on millions of Android and iOS devices. It’s a big win for gamers as recent price increases have made it more expensive to buy gaming hardware. Additionally, Macs might finally become decent gaming options, too.
