New tools have been introduced to allow Arm-based chips and Android apps to run more smoothly on the Steam ecosystem. Since the release of the Steam Deck, a handheld gaming device from Valve, the company has been using a compatibility layer called Proton to enable Windows games to run on its Linux-based SteamOS. Now, to further improve compatibility, especially on the Steam Frame—a larger, desktop-like device powered by SteamOS—Valve is incorporating two new compatibility layers that are new to the Steam architecture. The first of these is FEX, which is Valve's version of fex-emu. This open-source project allows Arm-based processors to emulate x86 instructions, which are used by most Windows applications and games. Fex-emu started as a small cross-platform emulation project in 2018 and has since evolved into a more advanced system that can recompile x86 code for Arm processors. It also supports modern graphics libraries such as OpenGL and Vulkan, which help reduce performance issues and minimize stuttering through a technique called code caching. Unlike Proton, which was built on the existing Wine project—a tool that allows Windows programs to run on Linux—FEX is a newer project that Valve has been actively supporting. According to a Valve engineer, Pierre-Loup Griffais, the company has been funding the lead developer of Fex-emu, Ryan Houdek, since the project was still in its early stages. At that time, the team estimated that it would take nearly a decade of development to make Fex-emu reliable enough for widespread use in software libraries. This investment highlights Valve’s long-term strategy to ensure that SteamOS can support a wide range of applications and games, not just those originally designed for Linux. By integrating FEX and other compatibility tools, Valve aims to make its ecosystem more versatile, allowing users to run both traditional PC games and Android apps on devices like the Steam Deck and Steam Frame.