Steam Deck lead reveals Valve is funding ARM compatibility of Windows games

https://frvr.com/blog/news/steam-deck-lead-reveals-valve-is-funding-arm-compatibility-of-windows-games-to-expand-pc-gaming-and-release-ultraportables-in-the-future/

90•OsrsNeedsf2P•56m ago

Comments

PaulHoule•46m 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•42m ago

Are you expecting to run Windows 11 ARM version on your Mac Mini directly, or within Parallels?

jitl•35m 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.

cptcobalt•35m 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•25m 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.

jsheard•35m 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.

Getting x86 code running on ARM macOS is the most solved part of the stack, it's the API translation that needs work.

jwitthuhn•30m ago

Rosetta 2 is going to be EOL'd within the next few years. A more permanent solution would certainly be welcome.

contact9879•26m 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•6m 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•26m 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 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-rose...

stetrain•24m 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•4m 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?

crtasm•36m ago

Link could be changed to the source: https://www.theverge.com/report/820656/valve-interview-arm-g...

porphyra•32m ago

But that is paywalled

crtasm•29m ago

Oh - I'm not seeing any paywall.

SirFatty•28m ago

Nope...

hashtag-til•27m ago

https://archive.is/AKhTr

baq•32m ago

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

embedding-shape•31m 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.

kidfiji•30m ago

I think it's more revealing of how they've been playing the long game

jhatemyjob•2m ago

The news is they've been secretly working on it for 10 years.

jchw•29m 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•23m 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/

QuantumNomad_•13m 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•10m ago

I know what you mean, sometimes I google Rust specific things (the coding language) and get Rust the game.

jsheard•11m ago

> I Don't understand why everyone else does not.

It's because the Linux versions of those anti-cheats are significantly weaker than their Windows counterparts.

tapoxi•3m ago

It's telling that Valve uses a user space anti-cheat (VAC) for Counter-Strike 2, but the competitive community overwhelmingly rejects that and ops to use a third-party Windows-only kernel mode anti-cheat (FACEIT).

ZiiS•15m ago

It works in the sense it allows you to run the game; but it does not prevent cheating. Obviously, Window's kernel anti-cheet is also only partially effective anyway, but the point of open-source is to give you control which includes cheating if you want to. Linux's profiling is just too good; full well documented sources for all libraries and kernel, even the graphics are running through easier to understand translation layers rather than signed blobs.

blibble•16m 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•11m ago

It may have taken them a while, but it does now work fine.

jmkni•2m ago

Define 'fine'

forrestthewoods•3m ago

It turns out the best API for gaming on Linux and gaming on ARM was Win32 and x86_64. Who knew?

Well, compiling ARM game binaries is actually super duper easy and just totally fine. The issue Windows actually has with ARM is GPU drivers for the ARM SoCs. Qualcomm graphics drivers are just super slow and unreliable and bad.

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Comments

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