Running Steam Games on Android with DroidDeck; Cyberpunk 2077 Runs at 60 FPS

DroidDeck runs Valve's ARM64 Steam client locally on supported Android devices, a feature that lets users run PC games without needing a...

The DroidDeck app runs Valve's ARM64 Steam client natively on supported Android devices; A feature that allows users to experience PC games on their phone without needing to stream, own a computer, or have root access.

A free and open source app called DroidDeck allows Android users to play their Steam game archive directly on their smartphones without the need for a PC or cloud streaming services. This project boots the Linux ARM64 Steam client in Big Picture mode directly on the Android operating system and provides the user with a familiar user interface similar to the Steam Deck console.

Windows games in this application are run through the Proton ARM64 compatibility layer of the company Velo, and the FEX tool is also responsible for translating x86 instructions to the ARM architecture. The use of this program does not require root access and does not replace the Android operating system with another operating system.

A YouTuber named ETA Prime has tested the DroidDeck application on the Nubia RedMagic 11 Pro smartphone; The device is equipped with a powerful Snapdragon 8 Elite 5th generation chip, 16 GB of RAM and a liquid cooling system. In this test, the Cyberpunk 2077 game managed to achieve an average rate of 60 frames per second with a resolution of 720p and medium graphics settings. The game Skyrim Special Edition also recorded the same performance at the same resolution. Also, the Left 4 Dead 2 game with 720p resolution and High graphics settings was able to reach the maximum set rate of 120 frames per second.

The Ghost of Tsushima game also reached an average of 48 frames per second in medium settings and 720p resolution, but this number increased to 60 frames by activating the frame generation feature in FSR technology. However, the performance of Hogwarts Legacy seemed very heavy, and the title struggled to maintain 30fps even with reduced graphics settings and FSR enabled.

Beyond raw processing performance, DroidDeck provides users with a wide range of features, including support for the Steam control system, resolution enhancement technologies such as AMD FSR and Snapdragon GSR, Lossless Scaling frame generation, graphics driver management, as well as plugins for displaying performance statistics on the screen. This app also supports other game stores and launchers such as GOG, Epic Games and Amazon Games; So that you can add their titles as non-Steam games and run them through Proton. Users can easily log into their Steam accounts and download games directly to their smart devices.

In terms of hardware, DroidDeck officially targets Adreno 730 GPUs and newer models (including all members of the Adreno 8xx family). Support for Adreno 6xx series GPUs is in beta, while models such as Mali, Xclipse, PowerVR and Adreno 710 are currently not supported. To use this application, Android 9 or newer versions are required, and before running Steam, users must disable the restrictions related to sub-processes in the Android operating system.

The Linux operating environment in this software occupies about 3 GB of storage space. The results and performance of the games will vary depending on the type of device and the game itself, and this project is still under active development (currently at version 0.3.2). It is worth noting that Velo does not officially support the implementation of Steam for the Linux operating system on the ARM architecture, and the DroidDeck application has no official affiliation with this company.