Microsoft has relentlessly saturated the digital landscape with its expansive “Xbox Everywhere” marketing initiative, a campaign designed to immerse consumers in the belief that any Wi‑Fi‑enabled device—from the smartphone in your pocket to the smart television hanging on your wall—can seamlessly transform into an Xbox console through cloud-based game streaming. The underlying message is simple yet grand: as long as there is a stable internet connection, gaming power need no longer be confined to a physical console. However, Valve, almost unexpectedly and in its characteristically subtle manner, is positioning itself startlingly close to offering an entirely different paradigm—one in which your complete library of games can be played across virtually any device you choose, entirely free from dependence on fluctuating network bandwidth or latency.
At their core, both Microsoft and Valve are pursuing the same overarching ambition. Each company aspires to capture and retain players’ attention—and their spending—within their distinct ecosystems. For Microsoft, this ambition materializes through Game Pass and the broader Xbox environment, while for Valve it manifests through the ever‑expanding Steam marketplace. Yet, the disparity in their organizational scale is striking: Valve, with roughly 350 employees, stands in sharp contrast to Microsoft’s colossal workforce surpassing 228,000 people globally. Despite this imbalance, both entities share a fervent determination to anchor players inside their digital stores, continuously encouraging more purchases and longer engagement. Valve’s strategic vision is clear—it seeks to bring not just more games to Steam but also more users and more devices capable of running Steam. The company’s ambitions even stretch into previously unexplored territories, such as enabling Android titles to function natively within the Steam environment.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has recently adjusted its own pricing structure, raising the subscription fee for its Game Pass Ultimate tier from $20 to $30 per month, a move justified by an increase in the number of streamable titles available within the less expensive tiers. As hardware prices for gaming PCs remain inflated, streaming inevitably appeals to users constrained by budgetary or performance limitations. For Valve, however, the ideal future is not one dictated by bandwidth reliability or server capacity but rather one where a player can load any owned game directly and natively on their preferred device—be it a robust gaming rig, a compact handheld system, or even a modern smartphone. The key to this transformative possibility lies within an innovative emulator named Fex.
Fex serves as the cornerstone of Valve’s newest technological effort. The reason for its timely emergence connects intimately with the design of Valve’s hardware experiments. Specifically, the company’s upcoming Steam Frame device employs an ARM‑based processor, compelling Valve to ensure broad software compatibility with the ARM architecture. Fex—an open‑source emulator—achieves exactly that by replicating chip architecture virtually, allowing software designed for one system to operate efficiently on another. Though the project’s open‑source nature suggests community-driven origins, Valve’s influence has been substantial. Pierre‑Loup Griffais, a seasoned Valve software engineer, revealed in an interview with The Verge that Fex has been under methodical development for more than seven years, nurtured by both Valve and a collection of independent developers. One such collaborator, known as Ryan H., noted publicly that Valve entrusted him with structuring the foundational framework so that the technology would remain sustainable over many years. The underlying objective is both ambitious and transformative: to dismantle the restrictive notion of hardware exclusivity—a barrier Microsoft itself has also sought to overcome in recent years through its own ventures into cross‑platform play.
Just last month, Valve unveiled two intriguing devices: the compact and console‑like Steam Machine and the Steam Frame, a VR headset equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor built upon ARM microarchitecture. This design choice highlights Valve’s long‑term vision of merging mobility with performance. Both devices operate on SteamOS, but the headset’s defining magic lies in its ability to play Steam titles not only via local streaming but also through the support of the open‑source x86 emulator Fex. Conceptually, the Steam Frame can be envisioned as a Steam Deck reimagined for virtual reality—essentially “a Steam Deck for your face”—differentiated by its ARM‑based architecture and cutting-edge chip efficiency. The ARM architecture, being a variant of reduced instruction set computing (RISC), emphasizes energy efficiency and thermal stability, making it an ideal choice for portable devices. Yet ARM’s inherent differences from x86 architecture present significant compatibility obstacles. Fex seeks to act as the technological bridge spanning this divide. Engineered with explicit support for Linux operating systems and the Vulkan graphics system, Fex integrates harmoniously with Valve’s software ecosystem, even if its name rarely appears in mainstream discussions except in niche developer tools like GameHub or GameNative. Much like Proton before it, Fex’s most influential role may remain subtly invisible to the average gamer, silently shaping the compatibility infrastructure that underpins the future of cross‑platform play.
The potential of this technology has already been foreshadowed elsewhere. Over a year ago, Qualcomm demonstrated Baldur’s Gate III running on its Snapdragon X Elite chipset via emulation—a signal that previously incompatible games could soon run universally across chip architectures. While Fex, particularly its Fex‑Emu component, is currently optimized for Linux, the open‑source community has been actively experimenting, porting versions to Android so that PC games might one day run smoothly on mobile devices through Steam. A core module known as FexCore has been explicitly described by its developers as architecture‑agnostic, meaning it is largely indifferent to its operating environment. Although significant refinement is still required before widespread native execution of games on Android becomes commonplace, these early experiments hint at a broader trajectory of progress.
This surge in ARM‑based devices—ranging from Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X‑branded PCs to an increasing supply of affordable portable gaming systems—further stokes the competitive landscape of emulation. Qualcomm promotes its Snapdragon ecosystem as inherently compatible with existing x86 programs, relying on an updated version of Microsoft’s own Prism x86 emulator accessible through the Snapdragon Control Panel. This tool promises greater transparency and reliability for users running non-native software, thus minimizing public complaints regarding compatibility. Nevertheless, Qualcomm has stated explicitly that its forthcoming Snapdragon X2 chips have yet to incorporate Fex technology, leaving an open question regarding which emulator will eventually dominate the gaming scene. Regardless of the outcome, Valve benefits from Fex’s open-source model: its community-driven development virtually guarantees that the emulator will proliferate across multiple platforms without requiring direct intervention or costly maintenance from Valve itself.
This pattern of indirect innovation echoes Valve’s earlier success with Proton—the Linux compatibility layer that quietly revolutionized gaming on non‑Windows systems. Though many users remain unaware of its operation, Proton remains one of the Steam Deck’s most significant achievements. Initially launched seven years ago and later popularized with the release of the Steam Deck in 2022, Proton has matured through continuous iteration. The results are remarkable: numerous games now perform as well, or sometimes better, on SteamOS than on Windows using identical hardware, thanks to reduced system overhead and the absence of background processes that commonly bog down Microsoft’s operating system. According to ProtonDB, more than 24,000 titles are fully or partially playable through Proton, demonstrating the depth of compatibility Valve and its partners have achieved.
Like Proton, Fex is the product of sustained collaboration between Valve and many independent developers, each contributing specialized knowledge in systems emulation and software translation. Yet, unlike Proton—which operates as a compatibility layer built atop Wine to run Windows executables within Linux—Fex performs full-scale emulation. This makes it substantially more demanding computationally, as it must mimic both the behavior of hardware and the software running atop it. Valve nevertheless assures potential users that the resulting performance impact will remain manageable, though naturally the effect will vary based on hardware capability. Low-end devices, especially smartphones with modest CPUs, may struggle more, and it will likely be some time before SteamOS itself becomes a familiar sight on mobile systems.
All of these developments are taking place against a broader economic backdrop in which gaming continues to grow more expensive. The costs of both consoles and PCs climbed noticeably throughout 2025, with forecasts suggesting that 2026 could see further escalation driven by shortages in essential components such as RAM. As new hardware prices climb beyond reach for many consumers, subscription services and alternative models of access—like Xbox’s game streaming—become increasingly appealing. Yet Valve’s approach offers a compelling counterpoint: rather than renting performance from the cloud, it seeks to empower players to take direct control of their games wherever they are, on whatever device they possess. In a world of rising costs and technological fragmentation, the ability to run Steam titles natively across disparate systems could redefine value and independence for gamers worldwide. While Microsoft may thrive by leasing access to a virtual console, Valve’s quietly evolving strategy may ultimately offer more freedom, longevity, and ownership to players who still prize the experience of local play.
Sourse: https://gizmodo.com/valve-has-the-secret-to-playing-your-games-everywhere-and-its-not-streaming-2000699887
