Gaming

The mobile and PC gaming markets are very different, both in terms of monetisation and what games people expect to play.

If Valve wanted to get into the mobile games industry they'd basically be starting from scratch, and I don't think it's a market they're particularly interested in.

You're also assuming that buying a game on PC steam will also give you a license to play that game on android, which isn't a given. I think many games have completely different monetisation models on mobile vs pc, so sharing between platforms like that wouldn't make sense.

Valve didn't expand Steam into Linux to gain market share in a new market, Valve did it because it is a hedge in case Windows becomes toxic to Steam. There is now a fallback position if Steam is locked out of Windows, and I expect Valve to continue to build in this position.

As for Android, there isn't a successful second app store that isn't tied to hardware; even Amazon quit Android. I don't think Valve sees Android expansion as commercialy viable.

Maybe, just maybe, they are waiting for proton for ARM to be a thing.

Imagine having actually a big percentage of your steam games just work on android. Now that would be disruptive for the market.

If it worked like I imagine it would.

Valve is in the business of selling PC games. Moving into a new market wouldn't be trivial, and Google has put up a lot of barriers to make it especially difficult for a third-party app store to challenge their monopoly.

I agree with you however I have one barrier to entry that others haven't elaborated on.

Firstly, I'll say how they could overcome some of the other challenges mentioned.

1. Steam would just have to add the ability for developers to upload android builds of games alongside the windows, Linux, Mac builds. All of a sudden, users would have huge, existing libraries of games. Most games built with Unity can target Android. I suspect a lot of indie developers would happily add the build.

2. Leaks have implied they were working on an arm emulator/translation layer but I assume this had to do with VR prototyping. Possibly the same effect as above but so many more configurations to target, they couldn't handle it the way they do with steam deck.

3. Require/recommend to users to use a controller on Android

If either or both of those first 2 points succeed, Valve doesn't need to do much more to ensure the utility of Steam games on Android. PC gamers are considered among the most willing and able to jump through hoops for a result. Going to a website to download the steam store plus a little warning on Android wouldn't stop a reasonable percentage of them. It wouldn't stop me.

It's almost 0 risk to them, right? Right? I don't think so.

Here's the big barrier I mentioned. I assume they have a not-insignificant number of sales through the the android app. If they start allowing users to install android games, Google is going to stop them from having purchases in their play store app. And while I said that users would install their app from a website, what percentage of users would do it? How many fewer PC game sales would they make (from the Play Store app) in order to let their current users play games on Android?

Additionally, what would Steam do if they started getting android-only games being submitted. Or mobile-quality games dominating their store? Does this dilute Steam's identity?

Additionally, it might be something they've discussed but they would have rather focused on steam deck-type gaming for mobile. Or perhaps an ARM-based steam OS+steamdeck approach would make more sense for them and then the difficulty/cost (and opportunity cost) increases do instead they simply don't pursue it.

The cross-buy thing is something that Gog or Epic could do but they don't have nearly the same "customer profile" (size, behaviour etc) so it isn't as likely to have the same impact.

Regardless, in my view you've asked a great question and it's a solid idea.

Valve have supposedly been experimenting with x86 emulation on ARM for their next VR headset. So I think they might actually be well on their way to enter that market. Probably with the plan of making PC games playable on Android.

Because Valve has gone to fair lengths to not become shit, and they probably don't want to start now.

It's a pain to get other app stores to get uptake on Android since Google refuses to let other app stores be distributed via Google Play. So if Steam starts to distribute games for Android, the Steam app would be thrown out from Google Play.

It's the same reason why the F-droids user base is so small and will never reach the main public. As soon as your app store needs to be installed via a third party web site, you have lost.

What would you suggest they sell on their Android store that users would be so encouraged to install a new store and then what they want?

Steam already has a store on Android, you just can't play games there because most games on steam either already exist on the native google play store, or aren't compatible with mobile architectures like Arm64. Most mobiles unlike a arm laptop, have no x86/amd64 emulator which is what those games are compiled as by their developers.

So what's left?

I do like Balatro and want to play it on my phone, but if I want to do that I have to buy another license, which I can't even do because I don't run Google Play Services

Spoiler: you can use the LÖVE loader to run the "PC version" of Balatro on Android, since it's all written in Lua.

What more do they need to do besides having Steam Link to let you stream your PC games to your phone?