Your Android gaming handheld can now run Steam games, but there's a catch

When Android gaming handhelds were first conceived, the idea of running fully-fledged Steam games on them seemed out of reach. However, both hardware and software development have accelerated significantly in recent years, making this a reality to some extent.

Thanks to the Rocknix team, the developers behind the eponymous “tinkerer’s distribution” of Linux for portable gaming devices, handheld owners can now install Steam and run the platform’s games on these devices (via RetroHandhelds).

This simplifies things quite a bit, but essentially, the latest Rocknix build allows Windows games to run via Valve’s Proton compatibility layer. This effectively turns these small Android devices into unofficial Steam Decks, which is brilliant considering their growing shortages.

While a variety of handhelds are currently supported, including popular models from AYN, Retroid, and Ayaneo, Rocknix only supports select Qualcomm chipsets. For instance, support for the Snapdragon 8 Elite powering the Odin 3 isn’t available yet. Games that rely on RTX “may not work” either, highlighting the cutting-edge state of the feature.

In reality, it’s probably best that you wait until the developers have ironed out all the bugs before hopping aboard the Steam train, as support is currently only available via unstable nightly builds. Although this is an exciting development, I’d suggest caution if you plan to use your handheld without issue.

Nevertheless, if you are looking for more excitement in your life, you can grab the latest Rocknix nightly builds here and follow the installation steps for your specific device on the Wiki to get started.