Microsoft has spent years saturating the gaming landscape with its “Xbox Everywhere” marketing campaign. The message is simple and relentless: nearly any device you own—whether it’s a smartphone, tablet, PC, or smart TV—can function as an Xbox, provided it has a sufficiently strong internet connection to stream games from the cloud. Valve, however, is quietly on the verge of offering a compelling alternative—one that allows players to access and run their existing game libraries across a wide range of devices without being at the mercy of bandwidth limitations or network reliability.
At a high level, Microsoft and Valve are chasing the same outcome. Both companies want to capture players’ attention, time, and spending by anchoring them to their respective ecosystems: Microsoft through Xbox Game Pass and the Xbox app, and Valve through Steam. Despite the massive disparity in scale—Valve reportedly employs around 350 people, compared to Microsoft’s global workforce of more than 228,000—the underlying motivation is the same. Each company wants players buying games, staying engaged, and committing long-term to its storefront. For Valve, that means pushing Steam everywhere: more games on Steam, more users on Steam, and Steam available on as many platforms as possible. Valve has even shown interest in bringing Android games onto Steam, underscoring just how expansive its ambitions are.
Microsoft’s strategy leans heavily on cloud streaming, a direction it has doubled down on by recently raising the price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate from $20 to $30 per month while expanding access to streaming features across lower-priced tiers. Game streaming naturally appeals to players with lower-end hardware or those unwilling—or unable—to keep up with the ballooning cost of modern gaming PCs. Valve, by contrast, is betting on a different philosophy. Rather than stream games from distant servers, Valve wants players to natively run their games on whatever device they prefer—even something as unconventional as a smartphone. At the heart of that strategy is an emulator called Fex.
So why Fex, and why now?
Fex is an open-source emulator designed to translate software built for x86 processors—still dominant in PCs—into something that can run on ARM-based systems. While the software is open source, Valve has played a major role in its development. In an interview with The Verge, Valve software engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais revealed that work on Fex began more than seven years ago, with contributions from numerous independent developers. One of those developers, Ryan H, wrote that Valve entrusted him with architecting the framework in a way that would remain viable long term. The broader goal of Fex is to eliminate the idea of hardware exclusivity in gaming—a goal Microsoft has publicly embraced in recent years, albeit through different means.
Valve’s renewed focus on Fex comes into sharper focus following its recent hardware reveals. Last month, the company showcased the Steam Machine, a console-like PC, alongside the Steam Frame VR headset. The Steam Frame is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor, a mobile-focused ARM chip. Valve says the headset will be capable of playing Steam games through a combination of local streaming and native execution using Fex, all while running SteamOS—the same operating system used by the Steam Deck and Steam Machine. In effect, the Steam Frame is something like a Steam Deck for your face, but its ARM-based hardware makes it a fundamentally different technical challenge.
ARM architecture differs significantly from the x86 processors used in most gaming PCs. As a RISC-based design, ARM is known for superior power efficiency and thermal management, making it ideal for mobile and lightweight devices. Fex is designed to bridge this architectural gap. Built with Linux and Vulkan support in mind, Fex integrates neatly into Valve’s existing ecosystem. While most users have likely never heard of Fex—outside of niche compatibility tools like GameHub or GameNative—it could prove as transformative as Valve’s Proton layer, even if it operates quietly in the background.
The idea of running traditionally incompatible games on ARM hardware is not hypothetical. Over a year ago, Qualcomm demonstrated Baldur’s Gate III running on a Snapdragon X Elite chip via emulation. What was once a tech demo may soon become commonplace. Currently, Fex (specifically Fex-Emu) is primarily designed for Linux, though enthusiasts have already experimented with running PC games on Android phones through Steam using modified versions. Other components, such as FexCore, are designed to be largely operating-system agnostic, though significant development remains before seamless Android support becomes viable.
The rise of ARM-based devices adds urgency to this effort. Qualcomm continues to push its Snapdragon X PCs, while affordable ARM-powered gaming handhelds are becoming increasingly common. Qualcomm itself claims that users shouldn’t need to worry about compatibility, pointing to its Snapdragon Control Panel and Microsoft’s Prism x86 emulator as solutions. However, Qualcomm has stated it has not considered Fex for its upcoming Snapdragon X2 chips, leaving open questions about which emulation layer will ultimately dominate gaming on ARM. Because Fex is open source, it may end up spreading organically across platforms regardless of official backing—an outcome that would only benefit Valve as Steam reaches even more devices.
Valve has already pulled off a similar feat with Proton. While many gamers fixate on hardware like the Steam Machine or Steam Deck, Proton remains Valve’s most impactful innovation. First introduced seven years ago, Proton—built on Wine and supported by Valve-funded developers—allows Windows games to run on Linux with minimal overhead. By the time the Steam Deck launched in 2022, Proton had matured to the point where some games performed better on SteamOS than on Windows, thanks in part to reduced background inefficiencies. Today, ProtonDB lists more than 24,300 games as playable through the compatibility layer.
Fex, however, presents a greater technical challenge. Unlike Proton, which translates software calls, Fex emulates an entire hardware architecture, demanding more processing power. Valve insists that performance losses will be manageable, though this matters far more on lower-end devices like smartphones or budget handhelds. SteamOS on phones may still be a distant prospect, but the groundwork is being laid.
All of this is happening as gaming becomes increasingly expensive. Consoles and PCs saw price hikes in 2025, and ongoing RAM shortages could push costs even higher in 2026. While cloud gaming positions Xbox favorably amid these pressures, Valve’s approach offers a different kind of future—one where players meet their games where they already are, running locally on lightweight, efficient hardware. If that vision pans out, a stripped-down SteamOS device powered by emulation may ultimately prove more appealing than relying on a fast, stable internet connection just to play the games you already own.