The difference there is it likely builds on the work they did for the Steam Deck and SteamOS. Writing a full Steam client for iOS or Android would be a huge amount of work independently from that.
Comment on Beyond Steam Machine: Why Valve's New ARM Support Shouldn't Be Overlooked
woelkchen@lemmy.world 3 weeks agoa fully functional Steam client would still be quite a surprise.
What’s running stand-alone games on Frame then if not a fully functional Steam client?
notfromhere@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
woelkchen@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Writing a full Steam client for iOS or Android would be a huge amount of work independently from that.
notfromhere@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
It looks like they ran Linux apps inside a virtual machine on an Android phone. That has been possible for a long time now. That is certainly a route Valve could go down, but it won’t be a very good user experience.
woelkchen@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Steamworks SDK supports Android now. Obviously, should there be an official full Steam client for Android, the preferred route is for game developers to release native Android games with Steam integration.
cron@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
It is, but my assumption is that ARM-based linux and ARM-based android require a different codebase.
I’m not a dev though, maybe I’m wrong and it’s easier than I thought.
MajinBlayze@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The main difference between arm Linux and arm android is how applications are packaged, (and android really wants you to build Java interfaces) but that’s easy enough to guy around. It takes some development, but doesn’t need to be a “new codebase”. The harder problems are making the ux work with different from factors.
Actually, Linux is a good example of how this works, since you can build Linux for dozens of different CPU architectures (x86, x86_64, arm, risc-v, powerpc, and the list goes on)
There are places in the code where there are bespoke instructions to optimize for a given architecture, but overall, it’s still one massive “codebase”
bless@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
The arm instruction set should be the same. Different processors might have different extensions. The main problem is the drivers. That’s why you can’t just flash any arm image on an arm phone, it has to have the drivers for the components that come with the phone
woelkchen@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
androidauthority.com/run-desktop-linux-apps-on-an…
cron@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
That approach uses virtual machines. While that is possible (otherwise we wouldn’t see it), it is probably not really optimized for gaming.
Wine / Proton / Box64 (already used for gaming on android) is using translation layers, not a full virtual machine.
soulsource@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
There was also an option to just install a Debian chroot on Android, with no virtualization in-between.
The app was called Lil’Debi, but isn’t maintained any more since 2018.
woelkchen@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Whether or not it’s optimized for gaming is up to Google. The technology to bring Frame’s ARM Steam client onto Android exists.