Android games are normally going to be inferior to Steam games, but this is still a nice option for games that aren’t available on Steam or can’t be played due to anti-cheat reasons.
You can read more about Waydroid here. There are reasons to believe valve is working on adding official Waydroid support to Deck, but until then you can install it this way.
Are there games exclusive to mobile that are worth having on deck?
Edit: (as in suggestions)
I would prefer the official YouTube client and web browsers properly developed for touch to be available in game mode. The best touch browser is currently Angelfish and that’s not a robust browser.
I hadn’t thought about having apps for to use in game mode.
It’s rare, but yes. There are some games with kernel anticheat that can only be installed on Deck with windows or android app support. There are games that you may not own on PC, or are much cheaper for the phone version. Some games get dramatically better battery performance if you run the phone version vs the PC version (the recent Roblox tool claims up to 4x the performance by running the mobile version). Finally there are some games that aren’t on PC at all.
It’s interesting that anytime people use a Windows VM to play multiplayer games of Linux, some devs become very hostile and ban them. But if the same thing happens using an Android VM, there is no noise. Why this difference in attitude? 🤔🤔
The only one I’m aware of is Fallout Shelter. The steam version is out of date but the android version is getting updates and new content.
Think of all the weird minigames that were only ever released on mobile; its Flash Games all over again! This is huge for emulation!
Bazzite has it by default, for anyone who wasn’t aware. As for official Valve support, I feel like that’s just wishful thinking; I’m not going to get my hopes up until we see more official news about it.
https://x.com/SadlyItsBradley/status/1806471231656296815
Here’s the source on Valve maybe preparing to add it.
That’s interesting, for sure. Definitely something to keep an eye on. I stand by what I said, though!
I’m convinced that is about bringing Oculus/Meta Quest VR games to the next Valve VR headset which is rumored to be stand alone and run SteamOS.
Another win for bazzite! I haven’t even used waydroid yet, but I’m happy to know it’s there.
I would use this for the apps
This is actually pretty cool. I’m going to try it out, even if I have no idea of what to actually play with this!
I would play honor of kings on my deck
Do you happen to know if these are account based or APK based? As in, is this something I connect my google account to or am I going to need all my APK’s?
You can install Gapps to use the play store, or use other stores like Aurora or F-droid. You can also install apps directly from apk.
Aurora store doesn’t work for me on X86 platform. Neigher through Waydroid neither through Android Studio emulator. It just hangs after initial setup.
I’ve heard you want to install Aurora store through F-droid, which should give you the x86 compatible version.
You can also try this, which can install libndk which lets you run some ARM apks on x86 (although installing x86 apks is recommended when possible).
Neat thanks. Not too many but I like the idea of some games from android transferring over. I have a bunch but I hardly ever open any lol
