Valve has quietly funded several open source projects needed to run Windows games on mobile phones

It's probably no surprise that Valve has just announced Arm-based hardware emulation technology. The first device to run Arm chips. But beyond its own hardware, Valve's support for open source emulation projects could lay the groundwork for playing your favorite PC games on Arm devices like phones and tablets, without the need for any ports.

Valve coming soon steam rack The headphones are from the company The first Arm-based deviceusing the open source FEX emulator to run Windows native games. It turns out that Valve was more involved in the development of FEX than initially seemed. during an interview edgeValve engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais revealed that Valve actually initiated the FEX project and has been primarily responsible for its development.

“We were talking to a number of developers who we knew would be well-suited for this type of project, which is a long-term project that requires a very specific set of experts,” Griffiths explained. “We worked hard to convince these people to start this project and we've been funding them ever since.”

This was supported by FEX's Ryan Houdek, who thanked Valve in a recent article anniversary post In recognition of the seven-year project “being here from the beginning.” “They trusted me with the responsibility of designing and building the project in a way that would work long-term; not just to fit their use cases, but to make it an open project that anyone could adapt to their own use cases.”

Although Valve has just released its first Arm-based device, the company has been considering developing for Arm as early as 2016. “We knew it would take nearly a decade of work before it became robust enough that people could rely on it in their libraries,” Griffais said.

As an open source tool, FEX is already used alongside other Valve-backed technologies 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 mobile phones without the need for ports. Whether the company has its own ambitions in the mobile space remains to be seen, with Griffith saying Valve's current focus remains on “living rooms, handhelds and desktops.”

Valve’s support for simulation comes from painful lesson when its original steam engine It failed, in part because of its limited library. By investing in technologies like Proton and FEX, Valve aims to help developers avoid having to invest time and resources in ports. “We would rather have these game developers invest their time and energy into improving their games, or developing their next game,” Griffith said. “We believe that, in terms of the value of the library, the porting effort is essentially a waste of effort.”