Valve is 'definitely' looking at Arm chips for future Steam Machines

Valve engineers have confirmed the company is actively investigating Arm-based hardware for future Steam Machine iterations — not just as a side project, but as a genuine platform consideration alongside its existing FEX work.

Valve's Pierre-Loup Griffais told PC Gamer that Arm is "definitely" on the table for Steam Machine successors. He framed FEX — Valve's x86-to-Arm translation layer, which works similarly to how Proton bridges Windows games to Linux — as a catalyst rather than a crutch: "If we have more options to pick from, and if users have more options to pick from [...] to play all the latest games in their back catalog library, they'll have a better outcome in terms of finding something that is cheaper for the horsepower that they need." Griffais also stressed that Valve approaches hardware design the same way a consumer would — weighing parts, price-to-performance, and timing — and said the studio "would consider any platform."

Arm's push into PC gaming has accelerated fast. Nvidia recently committed to a custom Arm architecture for its RTX Spark lineup, and developers are already shipping Arm-native ports — an Arm-native build of Alan Wake 2 ran on a pre-release Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra earlier this year and drew strong impressions. Valve itself is already deep in Arm territory: SteamOS is getting an Arm-specific build to accompany the Snapdragon-powered Steam Frame VR headset, due later this year. FEX and Proton together give Valve a translation stack that could make an Arm-based Steam Machine viable without waiting for every game to go native.

Don't hold your breath for an Arm Steam Machine anytime soon, though. Valve has already said new Steam Machine models are gated by price points, game availability, and timing — and the ongoing memory supply crisis has made things worse, leaving Valve uncertain at the start of 2026 whether it would have enough units to sell at all. With the so-called RAMpocalypse unlikely to ease before 2028, any Arm-based successor is probably further out than the hardware ambition suggests.