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Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

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Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#151

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.

It seems pretty clear to me that the main target of this is ARM Chromebooks, at least for now. As these are the only products currently shipping in any relevant numbers where this makes sense.

Since you're talking volume: what about MacBooks?

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#152
post #87
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point is that Apple is deliberately blocking Vulkan support. Which prevents things like Wine / Proton from offering decent performance for games there (MoltenVK is not really adequate for that). Being it's Apple, not some kind of poor entity who can claim lack of resources, I'd say they very much on purpose disregard gaming as a use case and therefore it's a strong reason to stay away from Apple to begin with if you…

> I'd say they very much on purpose disregard gaming as a use case Considering they made Metal, and the Game Porting Toolkit, and Game Center, and specific tabs for games in the App Stores, and Apple Arcade, and added native support for game controllers, and have dedicated sections of their keynotes to gaming, it is pretty clear they don’t disregard gaming as a use case. Tim Cook’s Apple is bad in a lot of ways, but…

> What you mean is they’re not embracing gaming the way you want

Yes. And I consider it disregarding when it comes to the needs of gamers (or users in general really). Apple's approach is always shoving in their users' faces "that's the way to do it". As I said, it's a major reason to completely stay away from them.

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#153
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.

I used to port games to linux (from windows). There is just a huge amount of work porting each game, even if the tech used is somewhat cross platform to begin with. Game devs in general (and the people funding them) are just not interested in doing that work; they have more than enough work just getting the game to ship on their primary target platforms. And at least back in my day, native linux ports sold extremely poorly.

Aside from that there is a huge catalog of games using DX 9-12 and other windows-specific APIs that is just never going to get ported and that even valve would never be able to get source code for. Most of that source code is essentially unobtainable and in some cases has passed through multiple IP holders such that whoever owns it now (most likely a big company like EA or microsoft) doesn't even know what they have, let alone how to build it or even where the archives are.

An additional fact is that nowadays many older games have communities that have modded them unofficially by resorting to DLL injection and other hacks - these hacks can work under proton with the windows executable, but would fail on with a native linux binary. An example is oblivion script extender and its many cousins for that family of bethesda games. Many of the more advanced mods for those games require the capabilities of those low level hacks.

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#154
post #44
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point is that Apple is deliberately blocking Vulkan support. Which prevents things like Wine / Proton from offering decent performance for games there (MoltenVK is not really adequate for that). Being it's Apple, not some kind of poor entity who can claim lack of resources, I'd say they very much on purpose disregard gaming as a use case and therefore it's a strong reason to stay away from Apple to begin with if you…

> deliberately blocking What do you mean by that?

Unlike Linux, Windows and etc. I don't think even GPU makers can provide their own implementation of Vulkan there - only Apple can do that. And they refuse. So it can be considered a deliberate blocking.

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#155
post #64
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows already AOT compiles x86 binaries to ARM64 when they are built with /ARM64EC option. It doesn't support AOT for older executables yet.

ARM64EC requires source and it produces an ARM64EC executable, which runs close to ARM64 speeds. x86/x64 executables are emulated.

Just to clarify: yes, it requires the source AND re-building it. But, with a simple switch, you make your x86 code JITtable on ARM64. That's why it runs at native ARM64 speeds. Sometimes, you can't build natively for ARM64 due to some dependency, and this allows portions of your code to be faster at least.

Otherwise, if you have the source AND budget to rebuild, just build it natively for ARM64 of course :)

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Proton has prevented anything. In fact, without it, and the back catalog of Windows games it makes available on SteamDeck, I doubt the handheld would have been as popular. SteamDeck was successful enough to get a re-release in the form of the OLED model, which is a big success for a Linux handheld. The longer Valve remains committed to the platform, and the more devices they get into the hands of consum…

The people I mentioned in my comment clearly disagree with you, and frankly they have more of an incentive to be well informed about the situation. See the twitter link I posted to your comment's sibling for Ethan Lee's impressions from three years ago. Also, I never argued against Proton having been a boon for Linux gamers, but I tried to present an opposing point of view that usually does not get taken into account…

In your opinion, why is the "trust in Proton" not considered "developing for Linux"?

Is your argument specifically about the game developer's mental model for Linux's priority, or something core about the Proton abstraction layer?

All software runs on some abstraction. So specifically, if the game developer prioritized a Linux port by explicitly testing Proton, would that be enough for you to consider the game "developed for Linux"?

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#157
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Silly argument, Vulkan also isn't available on Xbox or Playstation, yet dedicated game console platforms clearly care a lot about gaming. There's also only a handful of Vulkan games, supporting D3D11 and D3D12 on macOS would make a lot more sense. But in reality, porting to a different 3D API isn't what makes or breaks a game port.

I see nothing silly about it. Bringing other bad examples of lock-ins doesn't excuse Apple in the least. Personally I'd stay away from the above too.

> There's also only a handful of Vulkan games

There are a ton of games that are Vulkan games through vkd3d-proton and dxvk. Which was the above point.

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#158
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is pretty clear that Valve plays the long game. Proton existed for years before SD was released.

Proton didn’t exist in a vacuum though. It existed for Valves previously failed vision of the Steam Machine. Those were actual product lines that existed (briefly) to go along with Proton. The Steam Deck was Valve finally getting sick of nobody doing what they wanted, and technology getting to where they could do something more interesting than just another desktop.

Proton came well after the steam machine failed. It was plan B.

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#159
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like Apple has the opposite attitude of Microsoft's towards 3p apps in general, not just games. Mac updates will constantly break apps at least minor ways, sometimes major (like 32-bit removal).

Microsoft's reluctance to break things comes from commercial entities being a big source of licenses both for desktops and backend servers. If some poorly maintained mission-critical app doesn't run on Windows 11 because it hasn't had a recompile in a decade, that means a Global 2000 company isn't able to update their workforce. Apple considers it a partnership with developers, even if that partnership in reality is…

Gamers don't need to worry about "how games are supported" as along as they work. You can run many old games in Wine even though original developers stopped supporting them decades ago. Putting hurdles in the way of that is the opposite of supporting though and that's where Apple is causing a problem. This applies to refusal to support Vulkan as well as stuff like gutting 32-bit and OpenGL.

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#160
post #82
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Just use Whisky You know, every 6 months or so I get a sudden hankering to play Portal or something and start down this rabbit hole. Based on your prompt, I had another look today. So I went and downloaded this "whisky" thing. From their website: "Experience the latest titles effortlessly with Whisky!". OK. Installed. I open it and I see a window with "bottle configuration" (wtf is a bottle?), an "open c: drive" bu…

This is one of the things that Valve does very well. I even end up installing Steam on PCs that I run non-steam software on, because Proton is just that easy. I add the shortcut to Steam, choose my proton runtime (if that), click play, and the client does the rest. WHY ON EARTH is it more complicated with other launchers? No idea, and I bet that they have exactly 0 UX people among their midst. And even the programmer excuse doesn't work, that programmers are bad at this sort of thing (think "programmer art"); because programming also adopted convention over configuration in the early 2000s, 20 years ago now.

Sorry for the rant, I also hate bad UX. It makes me feel stupid for no good reason.

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