While numerous alternatives exist, including the Epic Games Store, No one disputes that Steam is the queen of video game stores. Its catalog is hyper-vast and all developers want their titles to be there.
However, at least until now, the Android gaming market has been left out of the party, as it has barely had an entry. Yes, that’s what you think: Steam has decided to open its platform to Android games and soon more and more titles will start arriving.
Steam opens up to Android games, but it does so for a much greater benefit
Through communication with The limitValve revealed it They have decided to allow Android games to be distributed on Steam. From now on, Any developer will be able to publish their titles in the Valve store to make life easier for users.
Why provide it if the Play Store already exists? Very simple, because The Play Store is not available on any device with Android (or a fork of Android). In this case, users will only be able to install a game via sideloading, using an APK, if it is not present in their device’s store. Be careful, and that’s only if Google doesn’t stop banning sideloading. Instead, Steam can be installed on almost any device and, once you get it, you will have the entire catalog at your fingertips.
Valve’s decision seems surprising, but nothing could be further from the truth. In case you didn’t know, the company recently unveiled the Steam Frame, virtual reality glasses compatible with Android APKs. By placing Android games on Steam, owners of these headsets will have everything more at their fingertips, but there’s more.
Valve wants to leverage existing games for Meta Questwhich use a fork of Android, to quickly increase the catalog of titles for their glasses. AS, developers will not have to create a new version of their games for Steam Frame. Simply distribute the same APK for Meta Quest on Steam and users will be able to play these titles on their Steam Frame or other future devices. And yes, natively, because they are all devices designed on ARM architecture.
In fact, Jeremy Selan, an engineer at Valve, indicated that “from the user’s perspective, we want them to not even have to think about it (as far as searching for an APK), They simply have their titles on Steam, download them and play«.
Plus, this move definitely goes hand in hand with paving the way for another one of his projects. In case you didn’t know, Valve wants to expand the reach of SteamOS to run on a wider variety of ARM devices. In principle the company is aiming for portable consoles with ARM chips, but don’t be surprised if they also end up entering the mobile and tablet market.
