Valve appears to be working on supporting games on ARM-based chips, which could significantly expand the number of devices capable of playing games from Valve’s Steam store. The move could also hint at future Valve hardware, such as a new Steam Deck sporting an ARM chip.
NotebookCheck spotted an update on SteamDB for an unknown application dubbed ‘ValveTestApp3043620’ that included changes which revealed the company’s work to support ARM in several popular titles. The update lists Left 4 Dead 2, Garry’s Mod, Kerbal Space Program, and Shadow of Mordor with ‘proton-arm64’ and ‘proton-arm64e’ tags. NotebookCheck spotted other tags too, including ‘proton-experimental’ and ‘proton-arm64ec-vanguard,’ which likely refer to experimental builds still in testing.
The tags indicate Valve is working on a version of its Proton software for ARM systems. Proton, for those unfamiliar, is a compatibility layer developed by Valve and CodeWeavers that allows Windows games to run on Linux and, by extension, Valve’s popular Steam Deck handheld.
There are a number of explanations for Valve’s work on ARM support here. One of the more exciting speculations is that Valve could have plans to support Steam games on Android. That’d be a huge boon for Valve, Steam and gamers alike — as someone with an extensive library of games on Steam, I’d love to be able to play even a fraction of them on my smartphone.
Other possible explanations include that the company is improving documentation in preparation for supporting SteamOS — Valve’s Linux-based software powering Steam Deck and more — on third-party handhelds. There’s also speculation the work could be related to a possible standalone VR headset codenamed Deckard, though whether or not Valve will ever launch such a headset remains to be seen.
It’s also worth pointing out that ARM-based PCs are growing in popularity now, thanks in part to Qualcomm’s excellent Snapdragon X chips on the Windows side and Apple’s M-series chips on the Mac side. Perhaps Valve’s ARM work is simply a play to improve compatibility for systems running these ARM-based chips.
Regardless, there’s a lot of possibility around improved ARM support for games. We’ll be watching Valve closely to see what it cooks up. I, at least, have my fingers crossed we get some kind of Android gaming support.
Source: NotebookCheck Via: Android Police
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