Imagine being able to play your favorite PC games on anything – your phone, your tablet, even a VR headset. That's the future Valve is quietly building, and it's all thanks to a little-known technology called Arm.
Valve has been secretly funding the development of open-source technology to make this dream a reality, as reported by The Verge. They're betting big on Arm, a type of processor that's increasingly popular in mobile devices and laptops.
And this is the part most people miss: The Steam Frame, a next-generation VR headset, is a key piece of the puzzle. Powered by Arm hardware, it hints at Valve's ultimate goal: streaming games from anywhere, on any device. Think of it as a portal to your Steam library, accessible wherever you go.
This isn't a new concept for Valve. They've been working on this for years. According to an interview with The Verge, Valve is backing Fex, an x86-to-Arm emulator that lets you play PC games on Arm devices. But their involvement in these open-source projects started back in 2016.
"All the core [Fex] developers have been funded by us since the beginning," says Valve's Pierre-Loup Griffais. This support has allowed the lead developer of Fex, Ryan Houdek, to work on it full-time. He even expressed his gratitude for Valve's early support, which has allowed the project to flourish as an open project that anyone can adapt for their own use cases.
So, what does this mean for you? In the future, you could be playing your Steam games on a wide range of devices, including phones, tablets, laptops with Arm processors, and various VR headsets. While Valve isn't currently developing its own Arm devices beyond the Steam Frame, other manufacturers are showing interest in SteamOS for their own devices.
Griffais suggests that this could "pave the way for a bunch of different, maybe ultraportables, maybe more powerful laptops being Arm-based," adding that "There’s a lot of potential for Arm."
But here's where it gets controversial... If Google and Apple were to open up their mobile ecosystems, we could see Steam and Epic Games Store games running on those devices without any sideloading, as noted by TechSpot. Arm-based Linux phones can already run games using Fex and the Proton translation layer. The platform holders are the only thing stopping this from becoming a reality on all phones.
What are your thoughts? Do you think this is the future of gaming? Would you like to play your Steam games on your phone or tablet? Share your opinions in the comments below!
About the Author:
Jon Martindale is a tech journalist from the UK with 20 years of experience covering PC components and gadgets. He's written for numerous publications, including ExtremeTech and Forbes. His gaming PC is built around the 7950X3D CPU and a 7900XTX, perfect for playing lightweight indie games and demanding sim titles like Kerbal Space Program.
