It may come as no surprise that Valve has invested in emulation tech for Arm-based hardware, having just announced its first device running an Arm chip. But beyond its own hardware, Valve’s support of open-source emulation projects may have laid the groundwork for playing your favorite PC games on Arm devices like mobiles and tablets–no ports necessary.
Valve’s upcoming Steam Frame headset is the company’s first Arm-based device, making use of the open-source FEX emulator to run Windows-native games. As it turns out, Valve has had more of a hand in FEX’s development than it initially appeared. In an interview with The Verge, Valve engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais revealed that Valve actually initiated the FEX project, and has been largely responsible for its development.
“We were talking with a few developers that we knew were the right fit for an undertaking like that, a long-term thing that needed a very specific set of experts,” Griffais explained. “We worked hard on trying to convince these guys to start the project, and have been funding them ever since.”
This is backed up by FEX’s Ryan Houdek, who thanked Valve in a recent anniversary post for “being here from the start” on the seven-year project. “They trusted me with the responsibility of designing and frameworking the project in a way that it can work long-term; not only for their use cases but also keeping it an open project that anyone can adapt for their own use cases.”
While Valve has only just revealed its first Arm-based device, the company started thinking about developing for Arm as early as 2016. “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,” Griffais said.
As an open-source tool, FEX is already being used alongside other Valve-supported tech like Proton to power some of the leading PC emulators for Arm-based mobile devices–meaning Valve is quietly leading the push to bring Windows games to your phone without the need for a port. Whether the company has its own ambitions in the mobile space is yet to be seen, with Griffais saying Valve’s current focus remains on “living room, handheld, and desktop.”
Valve’s support of emulation comes from hard lessons learned when its original Steam Machine flopped, partially due to its limited library. By investing in technology like Proton and FEX, Valve aims to save developers from having to put in time and resources on ports. “We would way rather have those game developers invest their time and energy into making their games better, or working on their next game,” Griffais says. “We think that porting work is essentially wasted work when it comes to the value of the library.”
