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Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

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31–40 of 202 posts

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#31
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice find, it’s true. That’s the only avenue I see where porting a AAA-style game makes sense for a Mac financially. Left 4 Dead 1 and 2, and several Counter-Strike games were also ported, but CS:GO was later discontinued for Macs. These were done without Apple’s money as I understand. And the discontinuation seems related to support costs on a platform that doesn’t have many gamers.

Yeah I think Valve ported their whole catalogue of games, but I'm not sure what exactly happened with the discontinuation - I thought they quietly dropped the Mac support tag from all of their games two or three months ago, probably because Intel Macs haven't been sold in a few years now? Presumably they didn't want to sink more money into Mac support (they had 11 years worth of Mac usage statistics to back up their…

> I'm not sure what exactly happened with the discontinuation

They didn't update their old games with 64-bit support, and in February they dropped support for the last macOS with 32-bit support (Mojave) because 98% of Mac Steam users had updated to newer OS releases. Mojave (released in 2018) hasn't received security updates in years, and doesn't support the latest CEF, which the Steam client is based on. https://www.tomshardware.com/software/macos/32-bit-mac-holdo...

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#32

It seems pretty clear to me that this is for Valve's long-awaited standalone VR headset, Deckard. What other reason would they have to support Gorilla Tag on ARM? https://x.com/SadlyItsBradley/status/1837210246076588500 Compatibility with your existing Steam library out of the box will be a huge competitive advantage for Deckard over Meta Quest.

And with Waydroid support, games designed for Quest or other Android-based headsets could run on Deckard as well.

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#33
post #17

With SteamOS, they solved their dependency on Windows. Now, they're trying to stop being tied to x86. ARM64 is being tested because hardware is already widely deployed, but not being tied to x86 is the important part. Enabling e.g. RISC-V as well.

They are fully dependent on Windows Games developed for Windows.

They are only working really hard not to pay for Windows OS licences.

The day they actually support native Linux games, instead of doing Windows API translation is when I believe they are actually serious about Linux games, and not saving OS licenses.

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#34
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me neither, but it's a shame. Those Apple Silicon chips are solid for gaming.

If Apple cared about gamers, they wouldn't have blocked proper Vulkan support. They simply don't care. A major reason to stay away from Apple if you are a gamer.

Most game studios don't care about Vulkan, that is why HLSL is what everyone uses instead of GLSL.

Any game engine worth using has Metal support for ages.

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#35
post #33
post #17

With SteamOS, they solved their dependency on Windows. Now, they're trying to stop being tied to x86. ARM64 is being tested because hardware is already widely deployed, but not being tied to x86 is the important part. Enabling e.g. RISC-V as well.

They are fully dependent on Windows Games developed for Windows. They are only working really hard not to pay for Windows OS licences. The day they actually support native Linux games, instead of doing Windows API translation is when I believe they are actually serious about Linux games, and not saving OS licenses.

On my deck, I can run native Linux games

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#36
post #2

It would be great if this meant proton is coming back to macOS :) I don't have high hopes however.

Just use Whisky (https://getwhisky.app/) or CrossOver (https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover)

While it would be great if Valve did what they do on SteamOS and just manage it themselves, it’s a very minor burden to use the existing solutions to do the same.

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#37
post #33
post #17

With SteamOS, they solved their dependency on Windows. Now, they're trying to stop being tied to x86. ARM64 is being tested because hardware is already widely deployed, but not being tied to x86 is the important part. Enabling e.g. RISC-V as well.

They are fully dependent on Windows Games developed for Windows. They are only working really hard not to pay for Windows OS licences. The day they actually support native Linux games, instead of doing Windows API translation is when I believe they are actually serious about Linux games, and not saving OS licenses.

Steam has supported native Linux games for a decade.

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#38
post #33
post #17

With SteamOS, they solved their dependency on Windows. Now, they're trying to stop being tied to x86. ARM64 is being tested because hardware is already widely deployed, but not being tied to x86 is the important part. Enabling e.g. RISC-V as well.

They are fully dependent on Windows Games developed for Windows. They are only working really hard not to pay for Windows OS licences. The day they actually support native Linux games, instead of doing Windows API translation is when I believe they are actually serious about Linux games, and not saving OS licenses.

all valve games are linux native, as are lots of steam releases

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#39

It seems pretty clear to me that this is for Valve's long-awaited standalone VR headset, Deckard. What other reason would they have to support Gorilla Tag on ARM? https://x.com/SadlyItsBradley/status/1837210246076588500 Compatibility with your existing Steam library out of the box will be a huge competitive advantage for Deckard over Meta Quest.

Imho it’s unlikely this is for natively running on a standalone headset. The overhead of translation alone would be just burning already limited compute budgets.

The other games on their list are too demanding for untethered play in the wattage one would have on a face mounted device. IMHO gorilla tag here is just a red herring.

IMHO this is just valve hedging the bet that ARM machines become more popular , and future steamdeck like devices might use ARM.

It would make sense that they test SteamVR running with proton and tethered to a headset rather than directly connected.

Imho, that’s the more straightforward explanation for this. The game is just a test bed for tethered play.

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#40
post #39

It seems pretty clear to me that this is for Valve's long-awaited standalone VR headset, Deckard. What other reason would they have to support Gorilla Tag on ARM? https://x.com/SadlyItsBradley/status/1837210246076588500 Compatibility with your existing Steam library out of the box will be a huge competitive advantage for Deckard over Meta Quest.

Imho it’s unlikely this is for natively running on a standalone headset. The overhead of translation alone would be just burning already limited compute budgets. The other games on their list are too demanding for untethered play in the wattage one would have on a face mounted device. IMHO gorilla tag here is just a red herring. IMHO this is just valve hedging the bet that ARM machines become more popular , and futur…

Could split it at the image generation layer? GPU work is done on the headset, sim is running on external machine.But then why use arm?
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