Always on the lookout for alternatives, Valve has never hidden its interest in ARM architecture.
The Steam platform needs no introduction. The pioneer of dematerialized video games on the PC and today the undisputed number one, Steam simply has no credible competitor at present, despite Epic Games' attempt with its EGS store. Its promoter, Valve, is more than ever on the lookout for diversification, and with more and more talk of ARM architecture to power our PCs, Gabe Newell's firm intends to be part of this technological revival. After decades of unchallenged dominance by x86 processors from AMD and Intel in particular, ARM architecture is now showing its face on our PCs, even though it is already ultra-dominant in the smartphone segment.
SteamDB
As Neowin explains, on the SteamDB site, some clever people have noticed the existence of a test application developed by Valve and named ValveTestApp3043620. A name that obviously doesn't say much, but when you look at the details of this application, you can see numerous references to " proton-arm64ec ". Schematically speaking, Proton is a so-called fork (derivative) of the Wine application, whose aim is to enable software designed for Microsoft Windows to run on Linux operating systems. Developed by Valve itself, Proton is the basis for the Steam Deck console, enabling it to run as many games as possible on its Linux-based system, SteamOS.
With the ValveTestApp3043620 test application, it could be that Valve is looking to go much further by turning to ARM architecture. In reality, while the information is interesting, it raises more questions than it answers. Is Valve only studying ARM architecture, or is its project already well advanced? More importantly, is this a project aimed "simply" at offering a Steam client for ARM architecture, or does Valve already have in mind Steam Deck 2, which could be based on an ARM chip? One thing is certain: Valve is not content with x86 domination of the PC gaming world.
