25 ms·

Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

978 points by evolve2k 10mo ago

https://archive.is/AKhTr https://archive.is/AKhTr

PaulHoule 10mo ago
Would love to see it on MacOS X -- Steam works great on my Mac Mini for the games it supports, would be great to see everything run on it.
- rahimnathwani 10mo ago
  Are you expecting to run Windows 11 ARM version on your Mac Mini directly, or within Parallels?
  - jitl 10mo ago
    You’d run FEX with WINE/Proton, no windows needed. If you did use a VM, I’d think it would be a Linux VM. But, Linux VM on macOS could already use Apple’s Rosetta2 for x86_64-to-arm64 translation. Speaking of which, maybe you could just run the games with Apple’s WINE “game porting toolkit” direct with Rosetta2. Worth a Google. EDIT: indeed, you can already play x86 windows games on Mac using software written by Apple: https://gist.github.com/Frityet/448a945690bd7c8cff5fef49daae858e https://gist.github.com/Frityet/448a945690bd7c8cff5fef49daae...
  - cptcobalt 10mo ago
    I think it's a pretty reasonable wish for more macOS + Apple Silicon support of games, including more native FEX & Proton ARM support within the steam client. (We're lucky Steam works, it's a better games client than the Mac App Store dreams to be, but that's also not saying much either.)
  - stetrain 10mo ago
    I think they're wishing for something like the Proton/Fex combination for running x86 Windows games on ARM Macs, like they already do for Linux.
  - zozbot234 10mo ago
    Apple Silicon has no UEFI support except as provided by Asahi, so that would be needed at a minimum to boot Windows 11 natively. Then there's the whole issue of having native Windows drivers for the Apple Silicon-specific hardware.
- jsheard 10mo ago
  I'm not sure what FEX could offer on macOS that Rosetta 2 doesn't already, with better performance thanks to Apple Silicon magic. Running x86 code on ARM macOS is the most solved part of the stack, if anything needs work it's the API translation layers.
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
  - jwitthuhn 10mo ago
    Rosetta 2 is going to be EOL'd within the next few years. A more permanent solution would certainly be welcome.
    - contact9879 10mo ago
      i’m not sure how end-of-life it will actually be because rosetta is used in apple/container and seems to be a large part of the virtualization stuff apple’s built in the last few years
      - yakaccount4 10mo ago
        I would imagine they would disable the user-facing "load x86_64 Mach-O's seamlessly" and other loader magic, and keep around the core for such things.
    - jsheard 10mo ago
      AIUI they intend to retire support for x86 macOS apps in a few years, but Rosetta will remain as a low-level component so that things like Crossover and Parallels can continue to work. Maybe not forever, but there's no immediate threat of it being EOL'ed. > Rosetta was designed to make the transition to Apple silicon easier, and we plan to make it available for the next two major macOS releases – through macOS 27 – as a general-purpose tool for Intel apps to help developers complete the migration of their apps. Beyond this timeframe, we will keep a subset of Rosetta functionality aimed at supporting older unmaintained gaming titles, that rely on Intel-based frameworks. https://www.macrumors.com/2025/06/10/apple-to-phase-out-rosetta-2/ https://www.macrumors.com/2025/06/10/apple-to-phase-out-rose...
- stetrain 10mo ago
  Yep. I know Apple has little motivation to support such a project but it would be great to see them work with Valve on this. Having the majority of Steam games "just work" on modern Macs, like they do on the Steam Deck, would be fantastic.
  - EA-3167 10mo ago
    I think it's more than "little motivation" if we're being honest. Right now Valve is quietly targeting MS' attempt to create a walled garden for gaming on Windows and (probably) cut them out. Their very clever approach has been a full end-run around the OS by using Proton, which I'm sure genuinely thrilled Apple... as long as Valve is only doing that to MS. Why would Apple ever invite Valve to potentially do the same to them?
    - stetrain 10mo ago
      Yes, that is what I was alluding to. But, I do think it might actually be a net positive for them on the Mac by expanding the audience of people who might buy a Mac. Given that full PC-Game-style game sales via the Mac App Store are likely abysmal, at least compared to mobile game revenue, I don’t think they have that much to lose.
      - deleted 10mo ago
        [deleted]
    - thewebguyd 10mo ago
      Especially looking at Apples recent gaming history. When Cyberpunk, AC, and a couple other AAA titles came to macOS, Apple made a big deal of them being in the mac app store, specifically. They didn't go out of their way to call out that they run on mac, you can get them from Steam, etc. The big deal was they are in the app store. That's where Apple wants mac gaming to happen so they can get their 30% cut. I wish that weren't the case, but Apple's gonna Apple.
      - PaulHoule 10mo ago
- jamie_ca 10mo ago
  Are you looking for Crossover? It's a bit annoying to not run Steam natively (no cmd+H to hide, etc) but it's got a lot of support. Performance is decent on my M2 mini, and even cross-platform stuff like Baldurs Gate 3 is comparable performance to native. Especially anything that Mac Steam natively calls out lack of 32bit support has good support.
  - danaris 10mo ago
    Sadly, that's not true—for instance, I was trying to run the Shadowrun Returns series the other day, and while it launches, it will hang indefinitely when you try to actually start a game. (M4 Max) I previously played through Returns, Dragonfall, and part of Hong Kong on Mac before the 32bit-apocalypse.
  - hamdingers 10mo ago
    CodeWeavers, the developers of Crossover, also do most of the development on proton under contract for Valve. This is speculation but I suspect there's something in that contract that prevents Valve from competing with Crossover on MacOS.
    - coldpie 10mo ago
      Nah, nothing like that. We explored shipping Proton for macOS early on, but decided it wasn't where we wanted to spend our time, so we removed it[1] to focus on Linux. There's only so many hours in the day, and supporting two platforms is a lot more work than one. [1] https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/commit/a84120449d8177fa40f3de729e55d238d3c24877#diff-b335630551682c19a781afebcf4d07bf978fb1f8ac04c6bf87428ed5106870f5 https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/commit/a84120449d817...
      - trueno 10mo ago
        wtf take my money expand your team!!!
        coldpie 10mo ago
- bertili 10mo ago
  Unfortunately, this will not happen. Even if they have it all working: Above all, Apple wants to show that their hardware is awesome, especially because it really is. Running x86 games or compatibility layers even with great emulation will make that $3000 Mac look half decent at best, against a $1500 gaming laptop. Simply not the story Apple want to tell.
  - throwaway48476 10mo ago
    If apple wanted to show that they have good hardware they wouldn't gimp the iPad pro with iOS. They really don't care.
    - wiether 10mo ago
      Currently, someone interested in an iPad and needing the power of a MB, will have to buy both. If they stopped restricting the iPad, those people would only have to buy an iPad. And as someone without a single interest in an iPad, I would worry that removing the iPad limitations would increase its market-share and lead to Apple reducing even more their interest in the MB, which would be terrible news to me.
      - commakozzi 10mo ago
        I used to understand/agree with this point, but over the past few years i've transitioned to my ipad pro for mobile usage and it has become my daily driver for mobile computing. When i need macos for anything, i typically will use Jump to connect and do something real quick, but that's rare. I'm starting to not understand why i wouldn't just want an ipad pro running a touch friendly (and i mean it would have to be VERY touch friendly) version of macos. again, i would have normally agreed with you, but that line is starting to blur for me...
- tasoeur 10mo ago
  The last time I can remember a collaboration between Valve and Apple was for the SteamVR support on macOS back in 2016. Sadly it fell apart a year(-ish) after that. But… one can dream!
- babypuncher 10mo ago
  I wonder if Apple's GPT (Game Porting Toolkit) could added to the macOS Steam client as a compatibility tool, like Proton is in the Linux client.
  - chuckadams 10mo ago
    GPTK is mostly a bunch of developer tools for converting to Metal, and the closest it gets to anything like Proton is an "evaluation environment" that is nothing close to Proton's performance. Proton is mostly Wine, and Wine on macOS uses MoltenVK, so it's probably easier to just port Proton.
    - babypuncher 10mo ago
      Direct3D -> Vulkan -> Metal is quite the translation layer sandwich, I wonder if that would have a meaningful impact on performance
      - chuckadams 10mo ago
        The D3D -> VK layer actually seems to speed things up, so maybe we'll just end up back where we started :)
  - 6SixTy 10mo ago
    Apple's GPTK only supports D3D12 -> Metal. In addition, it's ambiguous if 3rd parties can distribute the D3DMetal dylib, as there's no license.
- 6SixTy 10mo ago
  Main issue is the lack of Vulkan support on macOS. Currently, solutions like MoltenVK have to be developed to add Vulkan support, which isn't as clean as just supporting it. For some reason the prospect using Wine, Rosetta 2, and DXVK with MoltenVK on top just to run some games doesn't inspire a lot of confidence that this whole thing will be performant and/or stable.
  - nomel 10mo ago
    No, the main issue is a fundamentally different rendering pipeline (tile based deferred rendering) that makes "Vulkan support" a conceptually difficult square peg in a round hole problem, since everything is made for immediate rendering, like all the other mainstream GPUs use.
    - marmarama 10mo ago
      Loads of GPUs with Vulkan support use TBDR. The Adreno GPU in the Steam Frame's SnapDragon SoC, for one. There is also a Vulkan driver for the M1/M2 GPU already, used in Asahi Linux. There's nothing special about Apple's GPU that makes writing a Vulkan driver for it especially hard. Apple chooses to provide a Metal driver only for its own reasons, but they're not really technical.
      - nomel 10mo ago
        No. For best performance, you have to batch your calls/memory access patterns with TBDR in mind. Dropping in a Steam PC game (indy, AA/AAA) game render pipeline, specifically optimized for Nvidia/AMD/Intel, to a TBDR GPU, is going to give poor performance. That's the context of this discussion. Round pegs DO fit into square holes, you just have to make sure the hole is bigger than would normally be necessary. ;) Steam frame is more for streaming PCVR than running existing PCVR games natively.
        marmarama 10mo ago
        I already run stuff that was very much not made with TBDR in mind, on TBDR GPU architectures, and the performance is perfectly fine. For sure, you can squeeze a few percentage points more out if you optimize for TBDR, and there are some edge cases where it's possible to make TBDR architectures behave pathologically, but it's not that big a deal in the real world. I also disagree that the Steam Frame is for streaming primarily. If it was, why put such a powerful SoC in it or using it as the prototype device for doing x86 emulation with Fex? The Adreno 750 is a 3 TFlops GPU that _should be_ substantially faster than a PS4 or a Steam Deck. It'll play plenty of low-end PCVR games pretty well on its own, if Fex's x86 emulation is performant, which it is. Like the Meta Quest 2, it's a crossover device that a lot of people will just use standalone.
- Terretta 10mo ago
  It would be neat if Valve would fund having Steam Client run on Apple Silicon without Rosetta 2 so arm games like Baldur's Gate 3 can be fully supported.
  - preisschild 10mo ago
    If you mean "on Apple Silicon" just arm64, then they will probably do that for the Steam Frame. If you mean "on macOS", then probably not. But you can always install Linux on your Macbook.
- willis936 10mo ago
  Valve employed Alyssa Rosenzweig while she developed the graphics stack for asahi linux. That's a very simple statement that masks the size of the achievement and its impact on the world. No, we haven't entered a golden era of gaming on macs, but the world has been shown the way. And no, the software challenges are not insurmountable.
  - trueno 10mo ago
    bummed she left for intel she was next level. asahi lina commented after she left that there's currently no one doing graphics work anymore on asahi. projects kinda got some uncertainty to it now
- _aavaa_ 10mo ago
  But why? Valve is doing this because they don’t want to have the OS vendor exert total control over them and the gaming industry. Apple is a terrible choice by that metric.
  - ascagnel_ 10mo ago
    It'll never happen for a whole bunch of reasons, but a phone with Apple's hardware, Valve's OS, and Nintendo's game library would be amazing.
    - _aavaa_ 10mo ago
      You can get 2/3rds of that with a steam deck.
baq 10mo ago
This is news how exactly since the announcement of arm Steam Frame?
- embedding-shape 10mo ago
  Did they at the same time announced that they had been funding open source ARM compatibility for over a decade? Maybe it was mentioned somewhere, but the article had new details for me at least, even if I consider myself somewhat up-to-date generally.
  - alias_neo 10mo ago
    Agreed. I saw the Steam Frame announcement, and plan to get one as soon as it's available. I saw the mention of Fex then too, but absolutely nowhere, before now have I seen any information that they'd been working on this for the best part of a decade.
- kidfiji 10mo ago
  I think it's more revealing of how they've been playing the long game
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
jchw 10mo ago
> and modern multiplayer games with anti-cheat simply do not work through a translation layer, something Valve hopes will change in the future. Although this is true for most games it is worth noting that it isn't universally true. Usermode anti-cheat does sometimes work verbatim in Wine, and some anti-cheat software has Proton support, though not all developers elect to enable it.
- giancarlostoro 10mo ago
  > though not all developers elect to enable it. Looking at you Rust. Edit: And the rest of you. If even Microsoft's Masterchief Collection supports it, I Don't understand why everyone else does not. https://areweanticheatyet.com/ https://areweanticheatyet.com/
  - QuantumNomad_ 10mo ago
    First i thought you meant the video game Rust. Then I saw the arewe…yet url and thought you meant Rust the programming language Then I visited the arewe…yet link and realized it was the Rust game you meant after all
    - giancarlostoro 10mo ago
      I know what you mean, sometimes I google Rust specific things (the coding language) and get Rust the game.
      - spullara 10mo ago
        as a person that plays rust and writes rust I feel this all the time
      - wincy 10mo ago
        For awhile googling “Swift” was like that with Taylor Swift results instead of the programming language.
blibble 10mo ago
kinda funny that Microsoft has tried and failed multiple times to make Windows on ARM work and then valve is probably going to succeed, to Microsoft's detriment
- ZiiS 10mo ago
  It may have taken them a while, but it does now work fine.
  - jmkni 10mo ago
    Define 'fine'
    - Marsymars 10mo ago
      I run WoA on my daily work laptop and everything I run other than some of the junky IT-pushed apps (outlook extension to report phishing, etc.) are ARM64-native and run as expected.
      - jmkni 10mo ago
        That's good to hear, I remember that "holy shit" moment when I first moved to an Apple Silicon mac, I guess Microsoft are getting there but in a more hap-hazard "we'll make eventually" sort of way
        Marsymars 10mo ago
        That actually makes me think of the transition to high-res displays - Apple had like a year of pain when they introduced retina displays and non-updated assets would look blurry, whereas MS (and third-party devs) took years to get Windows to the point where mostly everything looks right at higher scaling levels.
        jmkni 10mo ago
        Is a great way of looking at it
tonetegeatinst 10mo ago
Given how arm license is know to be less than friendly.... Wouldn't it be preferable to explore a RISCV architecture. As far as I know RISC provides similar power efficiency and sleep that is like ARM.
- echelon 10mo ago
  That's a geopolitical question. ARM is Western RISC is China / Eastern Valve is just trying to outflank Microsoft here. And they're doing a magnificent job of it. Microsoft has on at least half a dozen occasions tried to draw a box around Valve to control their attempts to grow beyond the platform. And moreover to keep gaming gravitas on Windows. Windows Store, ActiveX, Xbox, major acquisitions ... they've failed to stop Valve's moves almost every time. Linux, Steam Box, Steam Machine - there's now incredible momentum with a huge community with more stickiness than almost any other platform. Microsoft is losing the war. The ARM vs RISC battle will happen, but we're not there yet. There also isn't enough proliferation for it to be strategic to Valve.
  - xpuente 10mo ago
    No: RISC is open ARM is closed. I suspect that many projects—such as BOOM—have stalled as a consequence of this situation. If it continues, the long-term impact will be highly detrimental for everyone involved, including stakeholders in Western countries.
    - cpgxiii 10mo ago
      RISC-V the ISA is open; RISC-V implementations need not be. There's no reason to believe that any truly high-performance implementations will be usefully open.
      - echelon 10mo ago
        And since China has such a lead, you'll be using their implementations. That's why this is geopolitical. The DoD and Five Eyes prefer ARM, where the US maintains a strong lead.
charcircuit 10mo ago
I thought for a moment from the title that Valve has finally started funding game developers to make content from SteamOS, but no, this is just another case where Valve pays some contractors for open source projects and force developers to foot the bill for verifying compatibility.
- ThrowawayTestr 10mo ago
  I'm sure those developers hate getting a larger install base for free.
  - charcircuit 10mo ago
    It's not just a larger install base. Those users may require extra support, those users may tank your reviews, those users may have a worse looking game or one that crashes a lot that can result in reputational damage.
    - ohdearnopls 10mo ago
      Then developers should fix their games and make sure the software they are selling actually works as advertised. End of discussion. I don’t quite understand the logic behind your argument. Are you advocating pro-monopoly? Should developers only release games on Windows by default unless other platforms decide to pay up? That’s ridiculous, utterly consumer-hostile.
      - charcircuit 10mo ago
        They are advertising that it works on Windows. Developers in an ideal world shouldn't have to worry about unsupported configurations. I'm advocating that developers should only have their games judged by supported configurations. >Should developers only release games on Windows by default unless other platforms decide to pay up? Other platforms could be profitable enough that developers could target and support them on their own volition.
the__alchemist 10mo ago
Does anyone know what the limfac is? The machine code produced is of course different on different CPU arches, but isn't this handled at the compiler level? I.e. lower level than game devs worry about. The exception I see is if SIMD intrinsics.
- jitl 10mo ago
  This system allows playing unmodified production x86 executables on arm64. It doesn’t have anything to do with the developers.
  - the__alchemist 10mo ago
    That's great, but begs the question: why not just compile the games for ARM?
    - wlesieutre 10mo ago
      Because this works for the enormous back catalog of games that already exist, many of which I bet companies no longer have the code or a working build system for, and for new games it doesn't require the developers to do anything because many (most?) of them wouldn't bother They may provide an option for developers to distribute a native ARM build (which some are already building for Quest titles that can be brought over to Steam Frame) but one of Steam's main advantages is their massive x86 games catalog so they certainly don't want to require that
    - bigyabai 10mo ago
      ...because there are thousands upon thousands of games that will never be compiled for ARM? Just look at all the "native macOS" games from the 2010s that are completely unplayable on modern Macs. Then look at all the Windows games from the 1990s that are still playable today. That's why.
    - Dwedit 10mo ago
      You need to convince all developers that all 117,881 Steam games need be recompiled for ARM. Hopefully they have a working build environment, have appropriate libraries built for ARM, still have the source code, and are able to do the testing to see if the same code works correctly on ARM.
micromacrofoot 10mo ago
2026 will be the year of the linux desktop
- jsiepkes 10mo ago
  If you ever get Linux to boot on your Snapdragon notebook...
- nosrepa 10mo ago
  I used to have `echo "$((( $(date +%Y) + 1 ))) will be the year of the linux desktop"` at the end of my .bashrc
  - whazor 10mo ago
    Linux desktop is getting better every year, meanwhile Windows and arguably MacOS are getting worse every year.
    - sipjca 10mo ago
      this is true, but linux desktop is still fragmented hell and will be for at least a few more years
pipeline_peak 10mo ago
I’m interested in seeing Proton perform on Arm for Windows x86 games. That sounds like a real challenge.
nullbyte 10mo ago
Yooo this is awesome, maybe we will finally get some game support on Macs now
- bigyabai 10mo ago
  Doubtful, the article is about FEX-emu and Apple has only shown interest in native ports of games to their platform. Plus, it looks like upstream FEX doesn't play very nice with Apple Silicon in the first place.
bigwheels 10mo ago
Any leads on when the next generation of Steam Deck will be released? Hoping it could be sometime in 2025, but suspect it will be more like 2026. Over the holidays I was playing GTA: San Andreas on a Nintendo Switch. It's fun but so underpowered for a game released in 2004 (Yes, 21 years ago! Damn..). I'm really craving something more. As a sidenote, it's really cool Valve allows installing SteamOS on any hardware. There are some alternative comparable form-factor devices: * Lenovo Legion Go S * Asus ROG Ally But I have yet to see any of these in real life, so not sure how good or bad they really are. Source: https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-handheld-gaming-devices https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-handheld-gaming-devices
- rincebrain 10mo ago
  I would assume Steam Deck 2 isn't dropping before at least H2 2026, if not later, if they didn't bring it out with the announcement of the other devices.
  - ewzimm 10mo ago
    Valve's only official statement as far as I know is that it will come when they see a significant enough hardware upgrade to warrant a new system. If they don't move to ARM, AMD's Medusa APUs are their next architecture with major upgrades, so I would guess that Valve would order another custom AMD chip but based on Medusa, which won't release until at least 2027. I would guess at least H2 2027 but probably early 2028 for an AMD-based Steam Deck 2.
    - rincebrain 10mo ago
      I would be surprised if they moved to ARM any time soon, because even if the CPUs can punch that hard, they're definitely not competing on the GPU front, from what I understand of the state of the art outside of Apple, so they're gonna wind up with a dGPU anyway if they did. Maybe my knowledge is out of date, but I'd be kind of surprised if a Snapdragon can get anywhere near competing with even the existing Steam Deck on GPU performance. Looking at [1] for a ballpark number on Snapdragon GPU performance doesn't seem encouraging. [1] - https://chipsandcheese.com/p/the-snapdragon-x-elites-adreno-igpu https://chipsandcheese.com/p/the-snapdragon-x-elites-adreno-...
jauntywundrkind 10mo ago
I was also delighted to see Steam has an effort underway for Android on Linux, allegedly a fork of Waydroid, that they are working on. Tentatively delighted because it's unclear if this really will be open source, but hopefully! https://steamdb.info/app/3029110/info/ https://steamdb.info/app/3029110/info/ https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/12/valves-version-of-android-on-linux-based-on-waydroid-is-now-called-lepton/ https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/12/valves-version-of-andr... I don't need Android apps that often, but it would be neat for the options here to expand and improve. I want to say much as Proton has accelerated things, but man, I am pretty lost now tracking which projects Proton encompasses and the history of where Valve backed/helped these efforts. I still really want to believe it's collaborative. That good work is going to flow upstream, to collaborated Valve + crowd spaces.
- N_Lens 10mo ago
  Wow this is exciting news!
adverbly 10mo ago
Everything valve doing for linux is making such a huge impact. The HL3 memes don't even seem fair to use anymore. I don't even want to un-seriously make joke fun of them at this point. They are just genuinely doing so much for the community.
- drannex 10mo ago
  To be fair, without the HL3 memes, would Valve ever become as massive as they are now without them constantly teasing and playing into it? (answer: probably, but I would like to believe that this is one of the greatest unintended marketing tactics of the 21st century).
  - red-iron-pine 10mo ago
    half life releases were tied to new platforms, such as HL2 and its physics engine, or HL Alex and VR kits. it's like Nintendo having a Mario game for their new hardware, e.g. Mario 64, etc. there weren't that many teases, nor is it great marketing; CS:GO competitive e-sports is better marketed and probably made Valve more money than any HL wink-wink-nudge-nudge ever would.
  - hamdingers 10mo ago
    Valve had near-total dominance over PC gaming distribution before HL3 even became a meme.
- jonny_eh 10mo ago
  There's pretty strong rumours that they actually have been working on a new Half-Life. People are hoping it releases with their new hardware in 2026.
  - aloisdg 10mo ago
    Imagine HL3, Portal 3 et L4D3 but all linux only. oh my
    - 10mo ago
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
Perz1val 10mo ago
Can someone tell me how much more power efficient is ARM actually? Like under load when gaming, not in a phone that sleeps most of the time. I've heard both claims, that it's still a huge difference and that for new AMD Zen it's basically the same.
- bigyabai 10mo ago
  It's workload-dependent. On-paper, ARM is more power-efficient at idle and simple ops, but slows down dramatically when trying to translate/compose SIMD instructions.
  - N_Lens 10mo ago
    You seem to have conflated SIMD and emulation in the context of performance. ARM has it's own SIMD instructions and doesn't take a performance hit when executing those. Translating x86 SIMD to ARM has an overhead that causes a performance hit, which is due to emulation.
    - bigyabai 10mo ago
      Both incur a performance hit. ARM NEON isn't fully analogous to modern AVX or SSE, so even a 1:1 native port will compile down to more bytecode than x86. This issue is definitely exacerbated when translating, but inherent to any comparison of the two.
- fulafel 10mo ago
  The instruction set has marginal impact. But many power efficient chips happen to be using the ARM instruction set today.
  - IshKebab 10mo ago
    I think that's still highly debatable. Intel and AMD claim the instruction set makes no difference... but of course they would. And if that's really the case where are the power efficient x86 chips? Possibly the truth is that everyone is talking past each other. Certainly in the Moore's Law days "marginal impact" would have meant maybe less then 20%, because differences smaller than that pretty much didn't matter. And there's no way the ISA makes 20% difference. But today I'd say "marginal impact" is less than 5% which is way more debatable.
Havoc 10mo ago
Now we just need qualcomm to sort out their linux snapdragon support
ant6n 10mo ago
I find it kinda ironic that they phase out 32bit at the same time. I’d guess it would be easier to emulate 32but x86, although the difference perhaps goes away with a JIT.
- debugnik 10mo ago
  There's no point in emulating just 32-bit x86 when modern games are all built for x86-64 plus several extensions. If they could make devs target an arch of their choice, they'd ask for aarch64 and skip funding FEX.
mikkupikku 10mo ago
Hypothetically, if Valve made a strong push to make SteamOS compatible with all Windows programs, not just games, could they make a serious run at knocking down Windows?
- raw_anon_1111 10mo ago
  And why would they care? Not even Microsoft really cares about Windows licensing for consumers and businesses are never going to use computers running fake Windows. There is no real business case.
  - sznio 10mo ago
    >businesses are never going to use computers running fake Windows. why not? If it's cheaper and compatible, why not?
    - raw_anon_1111 10mo ago
      That’s not how Big Enterprise works. “No one ever got fired for buying Microsoft”. Can you imagine the reputational risk of whoever decided that when something goes wrong they didn’t go with Microsoft? No one is going to trust a gaming company when it comes to their entire IT infrastructure. Besides businesses have an all in one contract with Microsoft for Windows, Active Directory, probably SQL Server, Office, a certain number of seats for MSDN for their developers, Azure DevOps (separate from Azure - it’s the modern equivalent of Team Foundation Server), and the list goes on. They don’t care about saving a couple of dollars on Windows license.
      - cromka 10mo ago
        I don't think they'd target businesses. I think they could totally ride the current gamers "Switching to Linux instead migrating to Windows 11" wave. Those users would definitely appreciate better compatibility with Windows apps.
        10mo ago
simianparrot 10mo ago
Thank god. Microsoft has shown they don't care about their users as anything other than eyeballs to shove bullshit to for _years_ and Gabe called them out on it back with Windows 8, and Valve has been working on this since. Steam Deck is fantastic to use. Good riddance to Windows.
- SpaceManNabs 10mo ago
  > Gabe called them out on it back with Windows 8 Context?
  - qwerpy 10mo ago
    Back when iOS and iPad were eating Microsoft's lunch in mobile, Microsoft freaked out and released Windows 8 with that new tiles UI framework ("desktop and tablet are going to converge so we need to dumb down the interface") and the Windows Store that was supposed to be their response to the App Store. Microsoft wanted all future Windows software to be released through the App Store. Of course, this was an existential threat to Valve/Steam, so Valve vociferously pushed back. The Windows Store and its apps were so bad that Microsoft eventually scaled back their ambitions, but Valve has not forgotten.
  - aeonik 10mo ago
    Gabe Newell: "I think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space." 2012: https://www.pcgamer.com/gabe-newell-i-think-windows-8-is-a-catastrophe-for-everyone-in-the-pc-space/ https://www.pcgamer.com/gabe-newell-i-think-windows-8-is-a-c...
  - SchemaLoad 10mo ago
    He made some critical comments to the media about the Windows app store and Microsoft's position of trying to turn Windows in to an iOS type situation with everything locked down. Remember that Microsoft had just released Windows RT and later Windows 10 S which could only run apps from the Windows app store. This could have pushed Steam out of the market if it had succeeded. Valve then spent the next decade building up Linux gaming almost from scratch to reduce their dependance on Microsoft.
the_af 10mo ago
I cannot speak for the Steam console and I don't care about playing PC games on my phone: it's not the form factor for me. But I'm really grateful for Valve and Steam. Increasingly, more and more Windows-only games "just work" with Linux (or work with minor tweaks taken from ProtonDB). I bought a Lenovo Legion a couple of weeks ago and I'm having a terrific experience with Linux+Steam so far. I don't claim to play the latest AAA games, but I don't feel the need to live at the edge anyway. One game that has resisted running so far is Space Marine 2. Eventually I'll get it going. Some people report success.
- komali2 10mo ago
  Space Marine 2 runs on my desktop, running Manjaro. Never tried on a handheld. Works fine!
  - the_af 10mo ago
    Any tweaks for Proton that you think were helpful? I tried stuff from ProtonDB but it hangs during the initial cutscene and never recovers.
cedws 10mo ago
The best thing Valve could do is nuke Wayland/X11/Xwayland from orbit. Wayland is a mess that apps still don't support and doesn't work with NVIDIA GPUs. X11 is ancient and screen tears. Xwayland is the worst of both worlds.
- paulryanrogers 10mo ago
  What do you use or recommend?
  - cedws 10mo ago
    I don't use Linux on laptops or desktops, only servers. I've been through all that pain. The userland has a long way to go to be a good OS everyone can use.
    - shmerl 10mo ago
      You clearly didn't use Linux any time recently.
      - cedws 10mo ago
        Nope, it still sucks. It's no good as an OS for general users. The average user has no idea what it even means to have an NVIDIA GPU, let alone be able to diagnose why their screen scaling is all fucked up or understand why they see stuff about 'killing child processes' when they press the power button.
        shmerl 10mo ago
        It is good, but if you didn't use it in forever, you won't actually know if it is.
        bigyabai 10mo ago
        You're basically confirming the parent's suspicions. Nvidia has supported Wayland since their 550 series drivers, for the last two years desktop Linux has run fine on damn near every supported card. You're not speaking for the "average user" here, you're speaking for yourself. We have a benchmark for what the average user thinks about Linux, and it's called a Steam Deck. You know what those users never mention? X11, Wayland, Xwayland or any of the stereotypical 2012-era boogeymen you're complaining about. It's almost as if... you haven't used Linux in years. I won't accuse you outright, but my suspicions are mounting. (posted from an RTX 3070 on Wayland)
tomaskafka 10mo ago
Commoditize your complements (layers above and below).
shevy-java 10mo ago
Unless I misunderstand something (not quite awake fully yet...), that's good right? Aka "play games on any platform" as goal. A bit with the inofficial goal of scummvm, to rescue old commercial games from vanishing for young, future generations.
2OEH8eoCRo0 10mo ago
fix anticheat!
LelouBil 10mo ago
Oh so they did not "adopt" Fex, they actually financed the leading developer from the start.
zallarak 10mo ago
This may be a naive question but why ARM and not RISC-V?
zallarak 10mo ago
This may be a naive question: why ARM and not RISC-V?
- fnands 10mo ago
  How many people do you know with RISC-V computers?
- debugnik 10mo ago
  RISC-V SoCs are still underpowered for the job, and the software ecosystem hasn't matured compared to ARM, specially for Windows/x86-64 emulation. The focus on RISC-V chips is simply too recent and has lacked enough demand for it. Your question is at least a decade too early.
whatever1 10mo ago
Don’t you think that if usage goes significantly up, MS will just use its lawyers to shut down all of these cute initiatives ?
- nialv7 10mo ago
  No, the supreme court has settled it [0], there's no basis for a lawsuit. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_....
petterroea 10mo ago
For an understanding of what Valve are doing, here is a 1 hour talk by Gabe Newell (CEO): Gabe Newell: On Productivity, Economics, Political Institutions, and the Future of Corporations https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td_PGkfIdIQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td_PGkfIdIQ TL;DR: * The most skilled workers are the most undervalued * Make products to serve the customer * Management is a skill, not a career path * The only people they consider themselves to be unable to compete with are their customers, so enabling the customer to produce better content in their ecosystem is the most efficient way of producing things.
komali2 10mo ago
> and that’s when the Fex compatibility layer was started, because we knew there was close to a decade of work needed before it would be robust enough people could rely on it for their libraries. In a recent Linus Tech Tips video, Linus Torvalds (original Linus) was asked, "if you could go back in time and start the Linux project from scratch, what would you do differently?" He had two answers, one was "nothing," and the other was "if I knew how much work this was going to take, I never would have started this project." It makes me wonder, is there some kind of blissful ignorance required to kick off a project that will take you years to see through? How many times have I self limited myself, stopped myself from starting something, because I put on my lead hat and did some estimations and thought eh, not worth it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfv0V1SxbNA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfv0V1SxbNA
devwastaken 10mo ago
Steam API doesnt even have an arm version. You cant build a native arm app with it.
bitwize 10mo ago
What Valve hasn't announced yet, but which has leaked, is "Lepton", a fork of Waydroid they're working on to enable Android gaming for Steam—in particular, getting Oculus Quest games going on the Steam Frame. The future actually looks pretty good for indie gaming development on the Android platform, Google's shenanigans notwithstanding.
globalnode 10mo ago
valve is just as ambitious as microsoft or google, they just appear to be the good guy for now because theyre trying to gain some ground on evil corp, and linux is one of the only openings they (or anyone) has got.
- systematizeD 10mo ago
  The only proprietary, steam client itself, you can fork their stack build your own store if you like.
unixhero 10mo ago
I suppose this will is in order to be able to push lower powered hand helds to penetrate further into global markets. Not everyone can afford an X64 Nvidia usd5000 gaming workstation.
- dominostars 10mo ago
  Given how expensive PC gaming is, between GPU and memory price explosions, I imagine everything Valve is doing, including recently announced hardware, is all in service of keeping Steam relevant.
thesnide 10mo ago
Video tech is driven by pr0n and OS tech is driven by games.
nottorp 10mo ago
The one thing that worries me is that PC gaming is going fast to requiring controller support. Which is reducing the complexity of control schemes to either nothing or mortal kombat like combos. Forward, down, forward, high punch to build a new city in a 4X in a few years?
- skibz 10mo ago
  Controllers provide analogue controls (eg. thumbsticks and triggers) that most keyboards don't have. If, as you suggest, the control schemes of video games are becoming less complex (Forward, down, forward, high punch) then surely the result would be more games that are playable with only a keyboard, not fewer?
  - nottorp 10mo ago
    Heh the MK combo mention was a joke. Forgot I’m on HN.
    - dirkderkdurk 10mo ago
      Original MK, Sub-Zero spine tear, sigh, the first one I ever did. Got me into gamedev. I appreciated it!
      - nottorp 10mo ago
        Had to look it up to post :) It was back in the days when we gathered at the kid whose keyboard could actually support so many simultaneous keypresses and did tournaments.
        dirkderkdurk 10mo ago
        Trying to play with 2 players on the same keyboard was a nightmare. On mine WASD seemed to cope better than the arrows, so there was always a rush to pick sides of the keyboard. Ah, good times.
- 10mo ago
btdmaster 10mo ago
> When you get into lower power, anything lower than Steam Deck, I think you’ll find that there’s an Arm chip that maybe is competitive with x86 offerings in that segment. At which point does this pay off the emulation overhead? Fex has a lot of work to do to bridge two ISAs while going through the black box of compiler output of assembly, right?
- hydroreadsstuff 10mo ago
  afaia emulators like Fex are within 30 to 70% of native performance. On the fringes worse or better. But overall emulation seems totally fine. Plus emulator technology in general could be used for binary optimization rather than strict mappings, opening up space for more optimization.
aperture147 10mo ago
I think Valve is not some kind of God who free the human from the hand of Microsoft, they are a private company, they are just protecting their business and protecting their business "accidentally" also protecting the customer's benefits. The movement towards Linux benefits Valve the most since they have invested on Linux Gaming for 10 years now and that movement "conveniently" benefits the gamers too. That's a win-win situation, users can escape themself from a bloated Windows and Valve has the pioneering advantage.
- egil 10mo ago
  They are a significant actor in the market, and as a non-pc-gamer I am glad that their business goals align with Linux users. I don't believe that they do it out of kindness, but that's actually a good thing for a long term investment.
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
  - aperture147 10mo ago
    > They are a significant actor in the market, and as a non-pc-gamer I am glad that their business goals align with Linux users. Until MS (or worse, Oracle) shows up with their half-baked clone (like Xbox Machine or Larry Cube) and ruins everyone's party
- bayindirh 10mo ago
  I believe the same but, > they are just protecting their business and protecting their business "accidentally" also protecting the customer's benefits. part is wrong. From my observation, they are protecting their business through protecting their customers' benefits. Plus, they're building a moat collectively and from an open source stack. So, given the stack gets enough momentum, having Valve or not as a company won't matter anymore. It's trying to get the elephant out of the bag, and once it's out, then there's really no way to put it back, because it's being out is better for everybody. Game companies and gamers alike.
sylware 10mo ago
It should be RISC-V...
- ramon156 10mo ago
  What would be the benefit?
  - sylware 10mo ago
    See the FAQ on risc-v site.
shortformblog 10mo ago
I downloaded an unoptimized game and tested it (Stray, a few years old at this point) and got some graphical glitches, but between 10-20 FPS on a three-year-old phone. That it’s even possible is impressive, and I imagine it will only get better as more games get optimized.
- Glemkloksdjf 10mo ago
  How did you do that?
  - shortformblog 10mo ago
    I followed the same steps the Verge reporter did: Downloaded GameHub, connected my Steam account. The initial boot was lengthy, but it worked.
kwar13 10mo ago
Valve has done wonders for Linux. I've often thought about this: https://kaveh.page/blog/linux-valve https://kaveh.page/blog/linux-valve
stefanovic 10mo ago
I like what Valve is doing for the Linux world, but I'd like to mention that box86 and box64 have been running x86 games onto arm (incl. android phones) for a long time too... And it does that on Risc-V and LoongArch too... There is not so much support from companies to this project that I know of, but the people behind box64 manage to make it a solid and fast solution to running windows game on arm.

978 points by evolve2k 10mo ago

https://archive.is/AKhTr https://archive.is/AKhTr

Would love to see it on MacOS X -- Steam works great on my Mac Mini for the games it supports, would be great to see everything run on it.

rahimnathwani 10mo ago
Are you expecting to run Windows 11 ARM version on your Mac Mini directly, or within Parallels?
- jitl 10mo ago
  You’d run FEX with WINE/Proton, no windows needed. If you did use a VM, I’d think it would be a Linux VM. But, Linux VM on macOS could already use Apple’s Rosetta2 for x86_64-to-arm64 translation. Speaking of which, maybe you could just run the games with Apple’s WINE “game porting toolkit” direct with Rosetta2. Worth a Google. EDIT: indeed, you can already play x86 windows games on Mac using software written by Apple: https://gist.github.com/Frityet/448a945690bd7c8cff5fef49daae858e https://gist.github.com/Frityet/448a945690bd7c8cff5fef49daae...
- cptcobalt 10mo ago
  I think it's a pretty reasonable wish for more macOS + Apple Silicon support of games, including more native FEX & Proton ARM support within the steam client. (We're lucky Steam works, it's a better games client than the Mac App Store dreams to be, but that's also not saying much either.)
- stetrain 10mo ago
  I think they're wishing for something like the Proton/Fex combination for running x86 Windows games on ARM Macs, like they already do for Linux.
- zozbot234 10mo ago
  Apple Silicon has no UEFI support except as provided by Asahi, so that would be needed at a minimum to boot Windows 11 natively. Then there's the whole issue of having native Windows drivers for the Apple Silicon-specific hardware.
jsheard 10mo ago
I'm not sure what FEX could offer on macOS that Rosetta 2 doesn't already, with better performance thanks to Apple Silicon magic. Running x86 code on ARM macOS is the most solved part of the stack, if anything needs work it's the API translation layers.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- jwitthuhn 10mo ago
  Rosetta 2 is going to be EOL'd within the next few years. A more permanent solution would certainly be welcome.
  - contact9879 10mo ago
    i’m not sure how end-of-life it will actually be because rosetta is used in apple/container and seems to be a large part of the virtualization stuff apple’s built in the last few years
    - yakaccount4 10mo ago
      I would imagine they would disable the user-facing "load x86_64 Mach-O's seamlessly" and other loader magic, and keep around the core for such things.
  - jsheard 10mo ago
    AIUI they intend to retire support for x86 macOS apps in a few years, but Rosetta will remain as a low-level component so that things like Crossover and Parallels can continue to work. Maybe not forever, but there's no immediate threat of it being EOL'ed. > Rosetta was designed to make the transition to Apple silicon easier, and we plan to make it available for the next two major macOS releases – through macOS 27 – as a general-purpose tool for Intel apps to help developers complete the migration of their apps. Beyond this timeframe, we will keep a subset of Rosetta functionality aimed at supporting older unmaintained gaming titles, that rely on Intel-based frameworks. https://www.macrumors.com/2025/06/10/apple-to-phase-out-rosetta-2/ https://www.macrumors.com/2025/06/10/apple-to-phase-out-rose...
stetrain 10mo ago
Yep. I know Apple has little motivation to support such a project but it would be great to see them work with Valve on this. Having the majority of Steam games "just work" on modern Macs, like they do on the Steam Deck, would be fantastic.
- EA-3167 10mo ago
  I think it's more than "little motivation" if we're being honest. Right now Valve is quietly targeting MS' attempt to create a walled garden for gaming on Windows and (probably) cut them out. Their very clever approach has been a full end-run around the OS by using Proton, which I'm sure genuinely thrilled Apple... as long as Valve is only doing that to MS. Why would Apple ever invite Valve to potentially do the same to them?
  - stetrain 10mo ago
    Yes, that is what I was alluding to. But, I do think it might actually be a net positive for them on the Mac by expanding the audience of people who might buy a Mac. Given that full PC-Game-style game sales via the Mac App Store are likely abysmal, at least compared to mobile game revenue, I don’t think they have that much to lose.
    - deleted 10mo ago
      [deleted]
  - thewebguyd 10mo ago
    Especially looking at Apples recent gaming history. When Cyberpunk, AC, and a couple other AAA titles came to macOS, Apple made a big deal of them being in the mac app store, specifically. They didn't go out of their way to call out that they run on mac, you can get them from Steam, etc. The big deal was they are in the app store. That's where Apple wants mac gaming to happen so they can get their 30% cut. I wish that weren't the case, but Apple's gonna Apple.
    - PaulHoule 10mo ago
jamie_ca 10mo ago
Are you looking for Crossover? It's a bit annoying to not run Steam natively (no cmd+H to hide, etc) but it's got a lot of support. Performance is decent on my M2 mini, and even cross-platform stuff like Baldurs Gate 3 is comparable performance to native. Especially anything that Mac Steam natively calls out lack of 32bit support has good support.
- danaris 10mo ago
  Sadly, that's not true—for instance, I was trying to run the Shadowrun Returns series the other day, and while it launches, it will hang indefinitely when you try to actually start a game. (M4 Max) I previously played through Returns, Dragonfall, and part of Hong Kong on Mac before the 32bit-apocalypse.
- hamdingers 10mo ago
  CodeWeavers, the developers of Crossover, also do most of the development on proton under contract for Valve. This is speculation but I suspect there's something in that contract that prevents Valve from competing with Crossover on MacOS.
  - coldpie 10mo ago
    Nah, nothing like that. We explored shipping Proton for macOS early on, but decided it wasn't where we wanted to spend our time, so we removed it[1] to focus on Linux. There's only so many hours in the day, and supporting two platforms is a lot more work than one. [1] https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/commit/a84120449d8177fa40f3de729e55d238d3c24877#diff-b335630551682c19a781afebcf4d07bf978fb1f8ac04c6bf87428ed5106870f5 https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/commit/a84120449d817...
    - trueno 10mo ago
      wtf take my money expand your team!!!
      - coldpie 10mo ago
bertili 10mo ago
Unfortunately, this will not happen. Even if they have it all working: Above all, Apple wants to show that their hardware is awesome, especially because it really is. Running x86 games or compatibility layers even with great emulation will make that $3000 Mac look half decent at best, against a $1500 gaming laptop. Simply not the story Apple want to tell.
- throwaway48476 10mo ago
  If apple wanted to show that they have good hardware they wouldn't gimp the iPad pro with iOS. They really don't care.
  - wiether 10mo ago
    Currently, someone interested in an iPad and needing the power of a MB, will have to buy both. If they stopped restricting the iPad, those people would only have to buy an iPad. And as someone without a single interest in an iPad, I would worry that removing the iPad limitations would increase its market-share and lead to Apple reducing even more their interest in the MB, which would be terrible news to me.
    - commakozzi 10mo ago
      I used to understand/agree with this point, but over the past few years i've transitioned to my ipad pro for mobile usage and it has become my daily driver for mobile computing. When i need macos for anything, i typically will use Jump to connect and do something real quick, but that's rare. I'm starting to not understand why i wouldn't just want an ipad pro running a touch friendly (and i mean it would have to be VERY touch friendly) version of macos. again, i would have normally agreed with you, but that line is starting to blur for me...
tasoeur 10mo ago
The last time I can remember a collaboration between Valve and Apple was for the SteamVR support on macOS back in 2016. Sadly it fell apart a year(-ish) after that. But… one can dream!
babypuncher 10mo ago
I wonder if Apple's GPT (Game Porting Toolkit) could added to the macOS Steam client as a compatibility tool, like Proton is in the Linux client.
- chuckadams 10mo ago
  GPTK is mostly a bunch of developer tools for converting to Metal, and the closest it gets to anything like Proton is an "evaluation environment" that is nothing close to Proton's performance. Proton is mostly Wine, and Wine on macOS uses MoltenVK, so it's probably easier to just port Proton.
  - babypuncher 10mo ago
    Direct3D -> Vulkan -> Metal is quite the translation layer sandwich, I wonder if that would have a meaningful impact on performance
    - chuckadams 10mo ago
      The D3D -> VK layer actually seems to speed things up, so maybe we'll just end up back where we started :)
- 6SixTy 10mo ago
  Apple's GPTK only supports D3D12 -> Metal. In addition, it's ambiguous if 3rd parties can distribute the D3DMetal dylib, as there's no license.
6SixTy 10mo ago
Main issue is the lack of Vulkan support on macOS. Currently, solutions like MoltenVK have to be developed to add Vulkan support, which isn't as clean as just supporting it. For some reason the prospect using Wine, Rosetta 2, and DXVK with MoltenVK on top just to run some games doesn't inspire a lot of confidence that this whole thing will be performant and/or stable.
- nomel 10mo ago
  No, the main issue is a fundamentally different rendering pipeline (tile based deferred rendering) that makes "Vulkan support" a conceptually difficult square peg in a round hole problem, since everything is made for immediate rendering, like all the other mainstream GPUs use.
  - marmarama 10mo ago
    Loads of GPUs with Vulkan support use TBDR. The Adreno GPU in the Steam Frame's SnapDragon SoC, for one. There is also a Vulkan driver for the M1/M2 GPU already, used in Asahi Linux. There's nothing special about Apple's GPU that makes writing a Vulkan driver for it especially hard. Apple chooses to provide a Metal driver only for its own reasons, but they're not really technical.
    - nomel 10mo ago
      No. For best performance, you have to batch your calls/memory access patterns with TBDR in mind. Dropping in a Steam PC game (indy, AA/AAA) game render pipeline, specifically optimized for Nvidia/AMD/Intel, to a TBDR GPU, is going to give poor performance. That's the context of this discussion. Round pegs DO fit into square holes, you just have to make sure the hole is bigger than would normally be necessary. ;) Steam frame is more for streaming PCVR than running existing PCVR games natively.
      - marmarama 10mo ago
        I already run stuff that was very much not made with TBDR in mind, on TBDR GPU architectures, and the performance is perfectly fine. For sure, you can squeeze a few percentage points more out if you optimize for TBDR, and there are some edge cases where it's possible to make TBDR architectures behave pathologically, but it's not that big a deal in the real world. I also disagree that the Steam Frame is for streaming primarily. If it was, why put such a powerful SoC in it or using it as the prototype device for doing x86 emulation with Fex? The Adreno 750 is a 3 TFlops GPU that _should be_ substantially faster than a PS4 or a Steam Deck. It'll play plenty of low-end PCVR games pretty well on its own, if Fex's x86 emulation is performant, which it is. Like the Meta Quest 2, it's a crossover device that a lot of people will just use standalone.
Terretta 10mo ago
It would be neat if Valve would fund having Steam Client run on Apple Silicon without Rosetta 2 so arm games like Baldur's Gate 3 can be fully supported.
- preisschild 10mo ago
  If you mean "on Apple Silicon" just arm64, then they will probably do that for the Steam Frame. If you mean "on macOS", then probably not. But you can always install Linux on your Macbook.
willis936 10mo ago
Valve employed Alyssa Rosenzweig while she developed the graphics stack for asahi linux. That's a very simple statement that masks the size of the achievement and its impact on the world. No, we haven't entered a golden era of gaming on macs, but the world has been shown the way. And no, the software challenges are not insurmountable.
- trueno 10mo ago
  bummed she left for intel she was next level. asahi lina commented after she left that there's currently no one doing graphics work anymore on asahi. projects kinda got some uncertainty to it now
_aavaa_ 10mo ago
But why? Valve is doing this because they don’t want to have the OS vendor exert total control over them and the gaming industry. Apple is a terrible choice by that metric.
- ascagnel_ 10mo ago
  It'll never happen for a whole bunch of reasons, but a phone with Apple's hardware, Valve's OS, and Nintendo's game library would be amazing.
  - _aavaa_ 10mo ago
    You can get 2/3rds of that with a steam deck.

baq 10mo ago

This is news how exactly since the announcement of arm Steam Frame?

embedding-shape 10mo ago
Did they at the same time announced that they had been funding open source ARM compatibility for over a decade? Maybe it was mentioned somewhere, but the article had new details for me at least, even if I consider myself somewhat up-to-date generally.
- alias_neo 10mo ago
  Agreed. I saw the Steam Frame announcement, and plan to get one as soon as it's available. I saw the mention of Fex then too, but absolutely nowhere, before now have I seen any information that they'd been working on this for the best part of a decade.
kidfiji 10mo ago
I think it's more revealing of how they've been playing the long game
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]

jchw 10mo ago

> and modern multiplayer games with anti-cheat simply do not work through a translation layer, something Valve hopes will change in the future. Although this is true for most games it is worth noting that it isn't universally true. Usermode anti-cheat does sometimes work verbatim in Wine, and some anti-cheat software has Proton support, though not all developers elect to enable it.

giancarlostoro 10mo ago
> though not all developers elect to enable it. Looking at you Rust. Edit: And the rest of you. If even Microsoft's Masterchief Collection supports it, I Don't understand why everyone else does not. https://areweanticheatyet.com/ https://areweanticheatyet.com/
- QuantumNomad_ 10mo ago
  First i thought you meant the video game Rust. Then I saw the arewe…yet url and thought you meant Rust the programming language Then I visited the arewe…yet link and realized it was the Rust game you meant after all
  - giancarlostoro 10mo ago
    I know what you mean, sometimes I google Rust specific things (the coding language) and get Rust the game.
    - spullara 10mo ago
      as a person that plays rust and writes rust I feel this all the time
    - wincy 10mo ago
      For awhile googling “Swift” was like that with Taylor Swift results instead of the programming language.

blibble 10mo ago

kinda funny that Microsoft has tried and failed multiple times to make Windows on ARM work and then valve is probably going to succeed, to Microsoft's detriment

ZiiS 10mo ago
It may have taken them a while, but it does now work fine.
- jmkni 10mo ago
  Define 'fine'
  - Marsymars 10mo ago
    I run WoA on my daily work laptop and everything I run other than some of the junky IT-pushed apps (outlook extension to report phishing, etc.) are ARM64-native and run as expected.
    - jmkni 10mo ago
      That's good to hear, I remember that "holy shit" moment when I first moved to an Apple Silicon mac, I guess Microsoft are getting there but in a more hap-hazard "we'll make eventually" sort of way
      - Marsymars 10mo ago
        That actually makes me think of the transition to high-res displays - Apple had like a year of pain when they introduced retina displays and non-updated assets would look blurry, whereas MS (and third-party devs) took years to get Windows to the point where mostly everything looks right at higher scaling levels.
        jmkni 10mo ago
        Is a great way of looking at it

tonetegeatinst 10mo ago

Given how arm license is know to be less than friendly.... Wouldn't it be preferable to explore a RISCV architecture. As far as I know RISC provides similar power efficiency and sleep that is like ARM.

echelon 10mo ago
That's a geopolitical question. ARM is Western RISC is China / Eastern Valve is just trying to outflank Microsoft here. And they're doing a magnificent job of it. Microsoft has on at least half a dozen occasions tried to draw a box around Valve to control their attempts to grow beyond the platform. And moreover to keep gaming gravitas on Windows. Windows Store, ActiveX, Xbox, major acquisitions ... they've failed to stop Valve's moves almost every time. Linux, Steam Box, Steam Machine - there's now incredible momentum with a huge community with more stickiness than almost any other platform. Microsoft is losing the war. The ARM vs RISC battle will happen, but we're not there yet. There also isn't enough proliferation for it to be strategic to Valve.
- xpuente 10mo ago
  No: RISC is open ARM is closed. I suspect that many projects—such as BOOM—have stalled as a consequence of this situation. If it continues, the long-term impact will be highly detrimental for everyone involved, including stakeholders in Western countries.
  - cpgxiii 10mo ago
    RISC-V the ISA is open; RISC-V implementations need not be. There's no reason to believe that any truly high-performance implementations will be usefully open.
    - echelon 10mo ago
      And since China has such a lead, you'll be using their implementations. That's why this is geopolitical. The DoD and Five Eyes prefer ARM, where the US maintains a strong lead.

charcircuit 10mo ago

I thought for a moment from the title that Valve has finally started funding game developers to make content from SteamOS, but no, this is just another case where Valve pays some contractors for open source projects and force developers to foot the bill for verifying compatibility.

ThrowawayTestr 10mo ago
I'm sure those developers hate getting a larger install base for free.
- charcircuit 10mo ago
  It's not just a larger install base. Those users may require extra support, those users may tank your reviews, those users may have a worse looking game or one that crashes a lot that can result in reputational damage.
  - ohdearnopls 10mo ago
    Then developers should fix their games and make sure the software they are selling actually works as advertised. End of discussion. I don’t quite understand the logic behind your argument. Are you advocating pro-monopoly? Should developers only release games on Windows by default unless other platforms decide to pay up? That’s ridiculous, utterly consumer-hostile.
    - charcircuit 10mo ago
      They are advertising that it works on Windows. Developers in an ideal world shouldn't have to worry about unsupported configurations. I'm advocating that developers should only have their games judged by supported configurations. >Should developers only release games on Windows by default unless other platforms decide to pay up? Other platforms could be profitable enough that developers could target and support them on their own volition.

the__alchemist 10mo ago

Does anyone know what the limfac is? The machine code produced is of course different on different CPU arches, but isn't this handled at the compiler level? I.e. lower level than game devs worry about. The exception I see is if SIMD intrinsics.

jitl 10mo ago
This system allows playing unmodified production x86 executables on arm64. It doesn’t have anything to do with the developers.
- the__alchemist 10mo ago
  That's great, but begs the question: why not just compile the games for ARM?
  - wlesieutre 10mo ago
    Because this works for the enormous back catalog of games that already exist, many of which I bet companies no longer have the code or a working build system for, and for new games it doesn't require the developers to do anything because many (most?) of them wouldn't bother They may provide an option for developers to distribute a native ARM build (which some are already building for Quest titles that can be brought over to Steam Frame) but one of Steam's main advantages is their massive x86 games catalog so they certainly don't want to require that
  - bigyabai 10mo ago
    ...because there are thousands upon thousands of games that will never be compiled for ARM? Just look at all the "native macOS" games from the 2010s that are completely unplayable on modern Macs. Then look at all the Windows games from the 1990s that are still playable today. That's why.
  - Dwedit 10mo ago
    You need to convince all developers that all 117,881 Steam games need be recompiled for ARM. Hopefully they have a working build environment, have appropriate libraries built for ARM, still have the source code, and are able to do the testing to see if the same code works correctly on ARM.

micromacrofoot 10mo ago

2026 will be the year of the linux desktop

jsiepkes 10mo ago
If you ever get Linux to boot on your Snapdragon notebook...
nosrepa 10mo ago
I used to have `echo "$((( $(date +%Y) + 1 ))) will be the year of the linux desktop"` at the end of my .bashrc
- whazor 10mo ago
  Linux desktop is getting better every year, meanwhile Windows and arguably MacOS are getting worse every year.
  - sipjca 10mo ago
    this is true, but linux desktop is still fragmented hell and will be for at least a few more years

pipeline_peak 10mo ago

I’m interested in seeing Proton perform on Arm for Windows x86 games. That sounds like a real challenge.

nullbyte 10mo ago

Yooo this is awesome, maybe we will finally get some game support on Macs now

bigyabai 10mo ago
Doubtful, the article is about FEX-emu and Apple has only shown interest in native ports of games to their platform. Plus, it looks like upstream FEX doesn't play very nice with Apple Silicon in the first place.

bigwheels 10mo ago

Any leads on when the next generation of Steam Deck will be released? Hoping it could be sometime in 2025, but suspect it will be more like 2026. Over the holidays I was playing GTA: San Andreas on a Nintendo Switch. It's fun but so underpowered for a game released in 2004 (Yes, 21 years ago! Damn..). I'm really craving something more. As a sidenote, it's really cool Valve allows installing SteamOS on any hardware. There are some alternative comparable form-factor devices: * Lenovo Legion Go S * Asus ROG Ally But I have yet to see any of these in real life, so not sure how good or bad they really are. Source: https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-handheld-gaming-devices https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-handheld-gaming-devices

rincebrain 10mo ago
I would assume Steam Deck 2 isn't dropping before at least H2 2026, if not later, if they didn't bring it out with the announcement of the other devices.
- ewzimm 10mo ago
  Valve's only official statement as far as I know is that it will come when they see a significant enough hardware upgrade to warrant a new system. If they don't move to ARM, AMD's Medusa APUs are their next architecture with major upgrades, so I would guess that Valve would order another custom AMD chip but based on Medusa, which won't release until at least 2027. I would guess at least H2 2027 but probably early 2028 for an AMD-based Steam Deck 2.
  - rincebrain 10mo ago
    I would be surprised if they moved to ARM any time soon, because even if the CPUs can punch that hard, they're definitely not competing on the GPU front, from what I understand of the state of the art outside of Apple, so they're gonna wind up with a dGPU anyway if they did. Maybe my knowledge is out of date, but I'd be kind of surprised if a Snapdragon can get anywhere near competing with even the existing Steam Deck on GPU performance. Looking at [1] for a ballpark number on Snapdragon GPU performance doesn't seem encouraging. [1] - https://chipsandcheese.com/p/the-snapdragon-x-elites-adreno-igpu https://chipsandcheese.com/p/the-snapdragon-x-elites-adreno-...

jauntywundrkind 10mo ago

I was also delighted to see Steam has an effort underway for Android on Linux, allegedly a fork of Waydroid, that they are working on. Tentatively delighted because it's unclear if this really will be open source, but hopefully! https://steamdb.info/app/3029110/info/ https://steamdb.info/app/3029110/info/ https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/12/valves-version-of-android-on-linux-based-on-waydroid-is-now-called-lepton/ https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/12/valves-version-of-andr... I don't need Android apps that often, but it would be neat for the options here to expand and improve. I want to say much as Proton has accelerated things, but man, I am pretty lost now tracking which projects Proton encompasses and the history of where Valve backed/helped these efforts. I still really want to believe it's collaborative. That good work is going to flow upstream, to collaborated Valve + crowd spaces.

N_Lens 10mo ago
Wow this is exciting news!

adverbly 10mo ago

Everything valve doing for linux is making such a huge impact. The HL3 memes don't even seem fair to use anymore. I don't even want to un-seriously make joke fun of them at this point. They are just genuinely doing so much for the community.

drannex 10mo ago
To be fair, without the HL3 memes, would Valve ever become as massive as they are now without them constantly teasing and playing into it? (answer: probably, but I would like to believe that this is one of the greatest unintended marketing tactics of the 21st century).
- red-iron-pine 10mo ago
  half life releases were tied to new platforms, such as HL2 and its physics engine, or HL Alex and VR kits. it's like Nintendo having a Mario game for their new hardware, e.g. Mario 64, etc. there weren't that many teases, nor is it great marketing; CS:GO competitive e-sports is better marketed and probably made Valve more money than any HL wink-wink-nudge-nudge ever would.
- hamdingers 10mo ago
  Valve had near-total dominance over PC gaming distribution before HL3 even became a meme.
jonny_eh 10mo ago
There's pretty strong rumours that they actually have been working on a new Half-Life. People are hoping it releases with their new hardware in 2026.
- aloisdg 10mo ago
  Imagine HL3, Portal 3 et L4D3 but all linux only. oh my
  - 10mo ago

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

Perz1val 10mo ago

Can someone tell me how much more power efficient is ARM actually? Like under load when gaming, not in a phone that sleeps most of the time. I've heard both claims, that it's still a huge difference and that for new AMD Zen it's basically the same.

bigyabai 10mo ago
It's workload-dependent. On-paper, ARM is more power-efficient at idle and simple ops, but slows down dramatically when trying to translate/compose SIMD instructions.
- N_Lens 10mo ago
  You seem to have conflated SIMD and emulation in the context of performance. ARM has it's own SIMD instructions and doesn't take a performance hit when executing those. Translating x86 SIMD to ARM has an overhead that causes a performance hit, which is due to emulation.
  - bigyabai 10mo ago
    Both incur a performance hit. ARM NEON isn't fully analogous to modern AVX or SSE, so even a 1:1 native port will compile down to more bytecode than x86. This issue is definitely exacerbated when translating, but inherent to any comparison of the two.
fulafel 10mo ago
The instruction set has marginal impact. But many power efficient chips happen to be using the ARM instruction set today.
- IshKebab 10mo ago
  I think that's still highly debatable. Intel and AMD claim the instruction set makes no difference... but of course they would. And if that's really the case where are the power efficient x86 chips? Possibly the truth is that everyone is talking past each other. Certainly in the Moore's Law days "marginal impact" would have meant maybe less then 20%, because differences smaller than that pretty much didn't matter. And there's no way the ISA makes 20% difference. But today I'd say "marginal impact" is less than 5% which is way more debatable.

Havoc 10mo ago

Now we just need qualcomm to sort out their linux snapdragon support

ant6n 10mo ago

I find it kinda ironic that they phase out 32bit at the same time. I’d guess it would be easier to emulate 32but x86, although the difference perhaps goes away with a JIT.

debugnik 10mo ago
There's no point in emulating just 32-bit x86 when modern games are all built for x86-64 plus several extensions. If they could make devs target an arch of their choice, they'd ask for aarch64 and skip funding FEX.

mikkupikku 10mo ago

Hypothetically, if Valve made a strong push to make SteamOS compatible with all Windows programs, not just games, could they make a serious run at knocking down Windows?

raw_anon_1111 10mo ago
And why would they care? Not even Microsoft really cares about Windows licensing for consumers and businesses are never going to use computers running fake Windows. There is no real business case.
- sznio 10mo ago
  >businesses are never going to use computers running fake Windows. why not? If it's cheaper and compatible, why not?
  - raw_anon_1111 10mo ago
    That’s not how Big Enterprise works. “No one ever got fired for buying Microsoft”. Can you imagine the reputational risk of whoever decided that when something goes wrong they didn’t go with Microsoft? No one is going to trust a gaming company when it comes to their entire IT infrastructure. Besides businesses have an all in one contract with Microsoft for Windows, Active Directory, probably SQL Server, Office, a certain number of seats for MSDN for their developers, Azure DevOps (separate from Azure - it’s the modern equivalent of Team Foundation Server), and the list goes on. They don’t care about saving a couple of dollars on Windows license.
    - cromka 10mo ago
      I don't think they'd target businesses. I think they could totally ride the current gamers "Switching to Linux instead migrating to Windows 11" wave. Those users would definitely appreciate better compatibility with Windows apps.
      - 10mo ago

simianparrot 10mo ago

Thank god. Microsoft has shown they don't care about their users as anything other than eyeballs to shove bullshit to for _years_ and Gabe called them out on it back with Windows 8, and Valve has been working on this since. Steam Deck is fantastic to use. Good riddance to Windows.

SpaceManNabs 10mo ago
> Gabe called them out on it back with Windows 8 Context?
- qwerpy 10mo ago
  Back when iOS and iPad were eating Microsoft's lunch in mobile, Microsoft freaked out and released Windows 8 with that new tiles UI framework ("desktop and tablet are going to converge so we need to dumb down the interface") and the Windows Store that was supposed to be their response to the App Store. Microsoft wanted all future Windows software to be released through the App Store. Of course, this was an existential threat to Valve/Steam, so Valve vociferously pushed back. The Windows Store and its apps were so bad that Microsoft eventually scaled back their ambitions, but Valve has not forgotten.
- aeonik 10mo ago
  Gabe Newell: "I think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space." 2012: https://www.pcgamer.com/gabe-newell-i-think-windows-8-is-a-catastrophe-for-everyone-in-the-pc-space/ https://www.pcgamer.com/gabe-newell-i-think-windows-8-is-a-c...
- SchemaLoad 10mo ago
  He made some critical comments to the media about the Windows app store and Microsoft's position of trying to turn Windows in to an iOS type situation with everything locked down. Remember that Microsoft had just released Windows RT and later Windows 10 S which could only run apps from the Windows app store. This could have pushed Steam out of the market if it had succeeded. Valve then spent the next decade building up Linux gaming almost from scratch to reduce their dependance on Microsoft.

the_af 10mo ago

I cannot speak for the Steam console and I don't care about playing PC games on my phone: it's not the form factor for me. But I'm really grateful for Valve and Steam. Increasingly, more and more Windows-only games "just work" with Linux (or work with minor tweaks taken from ProtonDB). I bought a Lenovo Legion a couple of weeks ago and I'm having a terrific experience with Linux+Steam so far. I don't claim to play the latest AAA games, but I don't feel the need to live at the edge anyway. One game that has resisted running so far is Space Marine 2. Eventually I'll get it going. Some people report success.

komali2 10mo ago
Space Marine 2 runs on my desktop, running Manjaro. Never tried on a handheld. Works fine!
- the_af 10mo ago
  Any tweaks for Proton that you think were helpful? I tried stuff from ProtonDB but it hangs during the initial cutscene and never recovers.

cedws 10mo ago

The best thing Valve could do is nuke Wayland/X11/Xwayland from orbit. Wayland is a mess that apps still don't support and doesn't work with NVIDIA GPUs. X11 is ancient and screen tears. Xwayland is the worst of both worlds.

paulryanrogers 10mo ago
What do you use or recommend?
- cedws 10mo ago
  I don't use Linux on laptops or desktops, only servers. I've been through all that pain. The userland has a long way to go to be a good OS everyone can use.
  - shmerl 10mo ago
    You clearly didn't use Linux any time recently.
    - cedws 10mo ago
      Nope, it still sucks. It's no good as an OS for general users. The average user has no idea what it even means to have an NVIDIA GPU, let alone be able to diagnose why their screen scaling is all fucked up or understand why they see stuff about 'killing child processes' when they press the power button.
      - shmerl 10mo ago
        It is good, but if you didn't use it in forever, you won't actually know if it is.
      - bigyabai 10mo ago
        You're basically confirming the parent's suspicions. Nvidia has supported Wayland since their 550 series drivers, for the last two years desktop Linux has run fine on damn near every supported card. You're not speaking for the "average user" here, you're speaking for yourself. We have a benchmark for what the average user thinks about Linux, and it's called a Steam Deck. You know what those users never mention? X11, Wayland, Xwayland or any of the stereotypical 2012-era boogeymen you're complaining about. It's almost as if... you haven't used Linux in years. I won't accuse you outright, but my suspicions are mounting. (posted from an RTX 3070 on Wayland)

tomaskafka 10mo ago

Commoditize your complements (layers above and below).

shevy-java 10mo ago

Unless I misunderstand something (not quite awake fully yet...), that's good right? Aka "play games on any platform" as goal. A bit with the inofficial goal of scummvm, to rescue old commercial games from vanishing for young, future generations.

2OEH8eoCRo0 10mo ago

fix anticheat!

LelouBil 10mo ago

Oh so they did not "adopt" Fex, they actually financed the leading developer from the start.

zallarak 10mo ago

This may be a naive question but why ARM and not RISC-V?

zallarak 10mo ago

This may be a naive question: why ARM and not RISC-V?

fnands 10mo ago
How many people do you know with RISC-V computers?
debugnik 10mo ago
RISC-V SoCs are still underpowered for the job, and the software ecosystem hasn't matured compared to ARM, specially for Windows/x86-64 emulation. The focus on RISC-V chips is simply too recent and has lacked enough demand for it. Your question is at least a decade too early.

whatever1 10mo ago

Don’t you think that if usage goes significantly up, MS will just use its lawyers to shut down all of these cute initiatives ?

nialv7 10mo ago
No, the supreme court has settled it [0], there's no basis for a lawsuit. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_....

petterroea 10mo ago

For an understanding of what Valve are doing, here is a 1 hour talk by Gabe Newell (CEO): Gabe Newell: On Productivity, Economics, Political Institutions, and the Future of Corporations https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td_PGkfIdIQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td_PGkfIdIQ TL;DR: * The most skilled workers are the most undervalued * Make products to serve the customer * Management is a skill, not a career path * The only people they consider themselves to be unable to compete with are their customers, so enabling the customer to produce better content in their ecosystem is the most efficient way of producing things.

komali2 10mo ago

> and that’s when the Fex compatibility layer was started, because we knew there was close to a decade of work needed before it would be robust enough people could rely on it for their libraries. In a recent Linus Tech Tips video, Linus Torvalds (original Linus) was asked, "if you could go back in time and start the Linux project from scratch, what would you do differently?" He had two answers, one was "nothing," and the other was "if I knew how much work this was going to take, I never would have started this project." It makes me wonder, is there some kind of blissful ignorance required to kick off a project that will take you years to see through? How many times have I self limited myself, stopped myself from starting something, because I put on my lead hat and did some estimations and thought eh, not worth it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfv0V1SxbNA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfv0V1SxbNA

devwastaken 10mo ago

Steam API doesnt even have an arm version. You cant build a native arm app with it.

bitwize 10mo ago

What Valve hasn't announced yet, but which has leaked, is "Lepton", a fork of Waydroid they're working on to enable Android gaming for Steam—in particular, getting Oculus Quest games going on the Steam Frame. The future actually looks pretty good for indie gaming development on the Android platform, Google's shenanigans notwithstanding.

globalnode 10mo ago

valve is just as ambitious as microsoft or google, they just appear to be the good guy for now because theyre trying to gain some ground on evil corp, and linux is one of the only openings they (or anyone) has got.

systematizeD 10mo ago
The only proprietary, steam client itself, you can fork their stack build your own store if you like.

unixhero 10mo ago

I suppose this will is in order to be able to push lower powered hand helds to penetrate further into global markets. Not everyone can afford an X64 Nvidia usd5000 gaming workstation.

dominostars 10mo ago
Given how expensive PC gaming is, between GPU and memory price explosions, I imagine everything Valve is doing, including recently announced hardware, is all in service of keeping Steam relevant.

thesnide 10mo ago

Video tech is driven by pr0n and OS tech is driven by games.

nottorp 10mo ago

The one thing that worries me is that PC gaming is going fast to requiring controller support. Which is reducing the complexity of control schemes to either nothing or mortal kombat like combos. Forward, down, forward, high punch to build a new city in a 4X in a few years?

skibz 10mo ago
Controllers provide analogue controls (eg. thumbsticks and triggers) that most keyboards don't have. If, as you suggest, the control schemes of video games are becoming less complex (Forward, down, forward, high punch) then surely the result would be more games that are playable with only a keyboard, not fewer?
- nottorp 10mo ago
  Heh the MK combo mention was a joke. Forgot I’m on HN.
  - dirkderkdurk 10mo ago
    Original MK, Sub-Zero spine tear, sigh, the first one I ever did. Got me into gamedev. I appreciated it!
    - nottorp 10mo ago
      Had to look it up to post :) It was back in the days when we gathered at the kid whose keyboard could actually support so many simultaneous keypresses and did tournaments.
      - dirkderkdurk 10mo ago
        Trying to play with 2 players on the same keyboard was a nightmare. On mine WASD seemed to cope better than the arrows, so there was always a rush to pick sides of the keyboard. Ah, good times.
10mo ago

btdmaster 10mo ago

> When you get into lower power, anything lower than Steam Deck, I think you’ll find that there’s an Arm chip that maybe is competitive with x86 offerings in that segment. At which point does this pay off the emulation overhead? Fex has a lot of work to do to bridge two ISAs while going through the black box of compiler output of assembly, right?

hydroreadsstuff 10mo ago
afaia emulators like Fex are within 30 to 70% of native performance. On the fringes worse or better. But overall emulation seems totally fine. Plus emulator technology in general could be used for binary optimization rather than strict mappings, opening up space for more optimization.

aperture147 10mo ago

I think Valve is not some kind of God who free the human from the hand of Microsoft, they are a private company, they are just protecting their business and protecting their business "accidentally" also protecting the customer's benefits. The movement towards Linux benefits Valve the most since they have invested on Linux Gaming for 10 years now and that movement "conveniently" benefits the gamers too. That's a win-win situation, users can escape themself from a bloated Windows and Valve has the pioneering advantage.

egil 10mo ago
They are a significant actor in the market, and as a non-pc-gamer I am glad that their business goals align with Linux users. I don't believe that they do it out of kindness, but that's actually a good thing for a long term investment.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- aperture147 10mo ago
  > They are a significant actor in the market, and as a non-pc-gamer I am glad that their business goals align with Linux users. Until MS (or worse, Oracle) shows up with their half-baked clone (like Xbox Machine or Larry Cube) and ruins everyone's party
bayindirh 10mo ago
I believe the same but, > they are just protecting their business and protecting their business "accidentally" also protecting the customer's benefits. part is wrong. From my observation, they are protecting their business through protecting their customers' benefits. Plus, they're building a moat collectively and from an open source stack. So, given the stack gets enough momentum, having Valve or not as a company won't matter anymore. It's trying to get the elephant out of the bag, and once it's out, then there's really no way to put it back, because it's being out is better for everybody. Game companies and gamers alike.

sylware 10mo ago

It should be RISC-V...

ramon156 10mo ago
What would be the benefit?
- sylware 10mo ago
  See the FAQ on risc-v site.

shortformblog 10mo ago

I downloaded an unoptimized game and tested it (Stray, a few years old at this point) and got some graphical glitches, but between 10-20 FPS on a three-year-old phone. That it’s even possible is impressive, and I imagine it will only get better as more games get optimized.

Glemkloksdjf 10mo ago
How did you do that?
- shortformblog 10mo ago
  I followed the same steps the Verge reporter did: Downloaded GameHub, connected my Steam account. The initial boot was lengthy, but it worked.

kwar13 10mo ago

Valve has done wonders for Linux. I've often thought about this: https://kaveh.page/blog/linux-valve https://kaveh.page/blog/linux-valve

stefanovic 10mo ago

I like what Valve is doing for the Linux world, but I'd like to mention that box86 and box64 have been running x86 games onto arm (incl. android phones) for a long time too... And it does that on Risc-V and LoongArch too... There is not so much support from companies to this project that I know of, but the people behind box64 manage to make it a solid and fast solution to running windows game on arm.