Valve has ported Half-Life: Alyx to ARM, and it’s free with Steam Frame
Valve has successfully ported Half-Life: Alyx to run natively on the Steam Frame's ARM-based processor. The port utilizes eye-tracking and foveated rendering to maintain high graphical fidelity on mobile hardware.
Why it matters
This technical achievement demonstrates the viability of high-end PC VR experiences on standalone mobile chipsets, a major milestone for VR accessibility.
Today, Valve is launching its first headset since 2019 — the new Steam Frame — while dodging our questions about whether it’ll ever make another VR game to go with it. But buyers of the $1,059 gadget will get one flagship VR game anyhow, and it’s great.
Every Steam Frame comes with a copy of 2020’s Half-Life: Alyx, one of the best VR games yet made and a good game, period, and you won’t even need a desktop PC — because Valve has ported the entire game to ARM64 so it can run natively on the Frame’s Qualcomm Snapdragon Gen 3 chip.
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