{"id":136640,"date":"2025-11-13T00:49:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T00:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/136640\/"},"modified":"2025-11-13T00:49:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T00:49:09","slug":"valve-is-welcoming-android-games-into-steam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/136640\/","title":{"rendered":"Valve is welcoming Android games into Steam"},"content":{"rendered":"

You can think of the just-announced Steam Frame<\/a> as a wireless VR headset for your PC, or a Steam Deck for your face. But another way to think about it is that Valve is finally entering the mobile realm. The Frame doesn\u2019t just run Windows games on its Arm-based Qualcomm Snapdragon chip \u2014 Valve will now support and encourage developers to bring their Android apps to Steam as well.<\/p>\n

It\u2019ll try to make some of them first-class citizens, too, Valve engineer Jeremy Selan tells The Verge. \u201cFrom the user\u2019s perspective, our preference is that they don\u2019t even have to think about it, they just have their titles on Steam, they download them and hit play.\u201d<\/p>\n

Valve says the Steam Frame can use the same Android APKs developers already use to bring their apps to phones and Android-based VR headsets such as the Meta Quest \u2014 and it\u2019s launching a Steam Frame developer kit program to help put the hardware in developers\u2019 hands.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

A transparent version of the Steam Frame. There\u2019s an Arm phone chip underneath that black heat pipe and heat spreader. Photo by Everything Time Studio \/ The Verge<\/p>\n

It sounds like Valve is specifically hoping to attract some of those Meta VR game developers, rather than just any kind of Android app you might find on a tablet or phone. \u201cThey\u2019re really VR developers who want to publish their VR content, and they\u2019re porting a mobile VR title where they\u2019re already familiar with how to make those APKs,\u201d says Selan. \u201cThey are now free to bring those to Steam, and they\u2019ll just work on this device.\u201d<\/p>\n

In terms of performance, Selan suggests it should be excellent because the code is running natively. While Valve\u2019s SteamOS is not Android and needs to use its Proton compatibility layer to make apps feel at home, the Arm code will run on an Arm processor without needing translation first.<\/p>\n

We answered your burning questions about Valve\u2019s new hardware.<\/p>\n

We hosted a subscriber-exclusive AMA about the Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and Steam Controller, and you can check out our responses here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When I ask about Android apps beyond games \u2014 and mention how I\u2019d really like to see things like Discord voice chat in Steam, not just Wallpaper Engine \u2014 Valve seems a little less sure. \u201cWe\u2019ve never disinvited people from doing that,\u201d says Valve\u2019s Lawrence Yang. \u201cWe are a games company and we are focused on games, but like you said, there are a lot of things on Steam that are tools, software like Blender for instance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Selan chimes in, \u201cWe don\u2019t have it quite working to show you today, but our intention is to have rich browser integration, so at any point you\u2019ll be able to bring up a browser, have floating windows, all of the multitasking environments you\u2019d expect, so you could certainly go to any website and have those apps present.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know there\u2019s a difference between that and what you asked, but we expect that will bridge a lot of that gap.\u201d<\/p>\n

Will there be a way to quickly launch those web apps from Steam, and let users turn them into buttons, perhaps? \u201cThat\u2019s our hope. I don\u2019t want to promise that for launch, but that\u2019s our hope,\u201d Selan says.<\/p>\n

Valve likes to build for the long haul, and I would be surprised if its plans begin and end at Android-based VR games for the Steam Frame. I think this is more likely the tip of the iceberg. For one thing, it\u2019s looking like Google will soon be forced to open up Android to alternative app stores<\/a>, so Steam might soon be able to easily sell games on phones just like its rival Epic has been trying to do.<\/p>\n

In the meanwhile, Gamers Nexus reports<\/a> that you\u2019ll also be able to sideload Android APKs onto the Steam Frame, too.<\/p>\n

But Valve\u2019s Pierre-Loup Griffais also hints that there\u2019s potential in bringing SteamOS to other devices with Arm chips, at least someday. He tells me he thinks the Steam Frame paves the way for SteamOS to work on \u201ca wider variety of Arm devices,\u201d including laptops, and that Arm obviously has \u201ca lot of potential\u201d in future handhelds.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

That\u2019s me, wearing Valve\u2019s first gadget designed to run both Android and Windows games. Photo by Everything Time Studio \/ The Verge<\/p>\n

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See All Tech<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You can think of the just-announced Steam Frame as a wireless VR headset for your PC, or a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136641,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2723,213,1711,61,60,43,4411,1094,216,80],"class_list":["post-136640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-android","tag-gaming","tag-google","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-pc-gaming","tag-report","tag-tech","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136640\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}