Inquiry about SteamOS ARM64 image and ARM64 support for Steam client and games

[gentrydeng]

Hello guys,

First, congratulations on the announcement of your new head-mounted display (Steam Frame) powered by the Snapdragon® 8 Gen 3 platform! It's exciting to see SteamOS 3 running on ARM64 (AArch64) architecture, and I'm eagerly looking forward to the growth of the ARM ecosystem within the Steam platform.

I would like to kindly ask if there are any plans to release the following:

• SteamOS 3 ARM64 Installation Image – Allowing users to install SteamOS on ARM64 devices.
• Steam Client for ARM64 Linux (https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/4061) – Enabling native ARM64 support for the Steam client on Linux.
• Steam Client for Windows on ARM and macOS on ARM – Expanding ARM64 support to other major platforms.
• ARM64 Game Uploads for Developers – Allowing developers to publish ARM64-native games on Steam.

If there is a public roadmap or timeline for any of these, I would greatly appreciate any information you can share.

Thank you for your hard work and for pushing the boundaries of open gaming platforms!

Best regards, Gentry

[Infinimitsu]

I'd love to see a version come out to support the Oculus Go, at least as a proof of concept. This, combined with some support to push more end-of-life headsets to get the same kind of unlock that the Oculus Go received thanks to John Carmack, maybe all these old headsets can get dusted off rather than thrown in the dumpster...

[LynnDrumm]

ARM64 Steam Client on macOS is especially necessary with Apple deprecating Rosetta2 support in the next 2 years

[0ype]

Valve actually did release a native arm client for macOS back in June. Unsurprisingly, there have also been leaks about an arm Linux client. No idea about windows on arm.

As for game uploads, Valve has confirmed they're going to allow people to publish vr (maybe non vr too idk) arm apks to steam. I also assume you'll be able to at least publish arm linux vr games on steam for the Frame, though funnily enough I haven't actually heard anything on that front myself. Maybe these games won't show up on the store if you don't have an arm device, but that's just a guess on my part.

Here's hoping Valve is planning to make arm a fully supported platform down the line.

[stevenlafl]

They have the libsteam_api.so in arm64, but no released steamclient.so, which is generally bundled with games. Have there been any games launched in arm64 for Steam? I wish they'd just give us a damned fully-compatible client lib and just bundle that standard alongside FEX.

[Tomuus]

It's probably not ready for launch yet. The client may be working but you probably still can't run x86 games. From what I know the only games launched for arm64 are the ones working on Apple M series with macOS. There was no purpose in launching them for arm64 Linux/Windows since nobody knew if the arm client was coming.