Valve is quietly solving the biggest problem in mobile gaming: running full PC games on your phone without needing to stream them from the cloud.
The gist is that they are building a “translator” called FEX. Right now, PC games and mobile chips speak different languages (x86 vs. ARM). Usually, developers have to rewrite (port) their games to make them work on mobile, which takes forever. FEX translates the code in real-time so the game just runs, and it’s optimized to use the phone’s graphics power directly so it doesn’t lag.
They’re testing this out on their upcoming VR headset, the Steam Frame(launching around 2026). Even though it uses a mobile chip (like the one in a high-end Android phone), it can apparently run PC games like Hollow Knight.
Interestingly, What proton is to Linux, Lepton is to Android.