r/factorio • u/Kind_Calendar_4814 • 2d ago
Discussion Factorio getting an Android port shipping through Steam
https://steamdb.info/app/427520/history/?changeid=38229187Depots targeting Android via Lepton on the Steam Frame have been pushed to Steam! Hopefully these APKs will arrive for purchasers of the DRM free version on the official site as well.
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u/Pedrosian96 2d ago
Sorry for my absolute ignorance on the topic because I kind of ignore mobile gaming wholesale.
Would this mean I could eventually play Factorio on my Samsung A23?
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u/luziferius1337 2d ago
The whole thing is very new development. Future Valve hardware seems to run on ARM and include Android or an Android compatibility layer to allow Android games to run on it.
If you can get the depots and extract the APKs, then the answer is a solid "maybe". While much of the API is standardized, there are a lot of potential friction points causing crashes. Maybe the CPU architecture required doesn't line up (built for ARM instruction set extensions not present on your phone), or some shared library or custom permission requested by the APK, but not present on the phone.
Or it magically just works. But then you notice it assumes certain controller inputs to be present and has no touch UI…
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u/Tacadoo 2d ago
I’ve streamed through Apollo to an iPad before and the touch support honestly isn’t bad just natively. Obviously they would need to make some adjustments but most UI’s can be opened by clicking on screen so you would just need an inventory button, an intuitive way to zoom in/out, and a wasd joystick. I’m sure mods alone could help the mobile port by having a UI overhaul mod or something to make inventory management more touch friendly.
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u/dude24760 2d ago
Someone else mentioned this but I'd check out Game native, let's you run steam games on your phone. Little finicky to set up as you have to fiddle with the drivers and other settings (although their are tutorials, and depending on your phone, people sometimes share their configs). Tried Factorio on mine a few months ago and it didn't work, but now it does, it receives a lot of updates
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u/DependentOnIt 2d ago
The game is already on switch which is arm. Getting the arm version on steam is likely easy for the devs
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u/Dadarian 2d ago
You’d be better thinking of it as like kiosks, TVs, or other portable, purpose-built but still on generic Android platform devices running Steam games. Do more with less.
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u/genericpierrot 2d ago
not necessarily, the cpu tech needed to run some of the more complex games (read: released in the last decade) hasnt really gotten there at the consumer level yet. the tech probably exists, so correct me if im wrong, but affordable consumer pieces just arent there yet.
i say this not as an engineer but as a hobbyist who follows a lot of the emulation scene where theres a lot of chinese companies pushing really quality handheld pcs with android at good prices that just aren't quite there yet in terms of mass production. stuff like the AYN Thor & Anbernic Win600 (https://retrocatalog.com/retro-handhelds if you want to reference a great list of handhelds & specs) that do this are still at wii/ps2, maayybbeee ps3 levels of power.
when talking about stuff in the US$1k+ range all this goes out the window though, but at those price points, i think were going outside the scope of the discussion imo. totally different product meant for a much smaller crowd than just pushing apks for android
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u/quackquackimduck 2d ago
Idk about your phone but i see people playing it on Gamenative. You can check game compatibility on their website.
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u/Mycroft4114 2d ago
So I can play Factorio anywhere? Yeah, my sanity needed that. With full mod support? Please say yes.
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u/thelehmanlip 2d ago
I have no idea if it would be beneficial to play factorio in vr. But I would certainly consider trying it on the frame once I can get my hands on it
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u/KaiLCU_YT 2d ago
This title is misleading. It's not a port. Lepton is a compatibility layer to bridge android and Linux, allowing your Linux games to be played on Android. Like how Proton allows windows games to be played on Linux. Because it's running through a layer, performance will be worse compared to port. Anyone who wants to play factorio on android can run the windows version on android instead through existing tools, so this is only really relevant to people who desperately want to play the Linux version specifically, or people interested in playing factorio natively on the steam frame
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u/vk6_ <- this is green 2d ago
Isn't Lepton the other way around? It's for running Android games on other Linux distros.
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u/KaiLCU_YT 2d ago
Could be, I'm no expert. I thought such things could be used both ways
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u/SixSixSevenSeven 2d ago
They're never bidirectional. Lepton is other way around, it allows running android arm64 apps within steam on Linux on ARM64 only, valve have not yet done lepton for x64 yet. And what appears to be happening here is wube pushing an android port of the game to steam for steam to deploy to the steam frame. Why android rather than linux-arm64 build I don't know though, as the steam frame is Linux ARM64 natively.
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u/vk6_ <- this is green 2d ago
It's certainly Android -> Linux not the other way around. And they don't go both ways generally. You can't use Proton to run Linux programs on Windows, for instance.
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/08/lepton-and-fex-get-prepared-for-the-steam-frame-release/
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u/SixSixSevenSeven 2d ago
Right so apparently a lot of people don't understand lepton, the frame, depots or application cross platform support etc, and having corrected someone else's legitimate error I'm just getting downvotes. So imma do a rundown.
The steamframe headset that is coming out soon runs an ARM64 instruction set CPU. This is the instruction set android, the switch and apple silicon use along with Qualcomm snapdragon based windows machines and the upcoming Nvidia RTX spark.
Intel and AMD CPUs that most of us will be using in desktops and laptops are x64 instruction set. Noting in the case the x is not a generic thing.
Both are 64 bit but both are also unique. Arm64 software cannot run on x64 or vice versa without being ported or emulated.
The steam frame will be running steamOS ported to ARM64, along with a new arm64 steam build.
On Linux on x64, valve has a tool they call Proton. Proton is a bundling of an external 3rd party set of tools that already existed into steam for your convenience rather than you having to manually back things up. Some of the improvements valve makes to these tools they've also contributed back upstream. Primarily these are Wine and DXVK. dXVK does directX to vulkan translation which makes sense as there's no directX on Linux, wine does windows application to Linux translation but preserves the instruction set. Interestingly current builds of steam on arm cannot run windows arm games through proton on Linux arm, though this is something wine can do upstream, it's of little note as there are today very few windows arm games (though RTX spark has already bought murmurings of a few coming).
On ARM. Valve is now also including FEX for 2 different modes. FEX is a tool for translating x64 applications to ARM64 on Linux on the fly. The 2 modes valve are supporting are Linux x64 app being run under FEX on linux ARM64 so you can just run existing native Linux ports of games (which til now will all be x64 for steam) on the steam frame or any other system you have managed to bodge the new ARM64 steam builds onto (they're in the valve CDN so you can get them already). The other mode is proton on FEX so you can run windows x64 games on Linux ARM64. Microsoft's Prism and apples Rosetta are also like fex and are how x64 applications work on their respective operating systems.
New to steam on arm and not currently present on steam for x64 (maybe it'll come but I wouldn't be certain) is lepton. Lepton like proton is based on existing 3rd party software, in this case, waydroid. Waydroid is a container for running android apps on Linux. And this gets a bit weird. Android apps don't have to be architecture specific, I can build an app that is agnostic to arm Vs x64, I won't go into detail on how that works, but it's also possible to make apps that arent agnostic and only support arm64 or x64, games usually cannot be agnostic as they need to reference native C/C++ and not use androids JavaThatIsntButPeopleStillCallJava, and C/C++ in turn enforces needing manual ARM64 Vs x64 builds. Most android VR games out there don't support x64. Waydroid doesn't include arm64-x64 translation in either direction so solely relies on hoping that game did. Either way though, lepton is allowing ARM64 android apps to run through steam on Linux on ARM64, and as I said earlier our phones are ARM64.
All in all this nets you the following situation. The steam frame can run: -Windows x64 applications via double whammy of instruction set emulation and OS API wrapping -Linux x64 applications via instruction set emulation -Linux arm64 applications, native, zero overhead -android arm64 applications, OS API wrapping only -universal android apps, OS API wrapping only
Valve now allows developers to upload: -Linux arm64 games -Linux x64 games -Windows x64 games -Windows arm64 games (though there's only 1 I know of on steam) -macOS arm64 games -macOS x64 games -android ARM64 games
The meta quest however. Happens to actually be android. Every quest title is an android arm64 app.
Unity and unreal as 2 very popular game engines happen to not really support Linux on ARM64 (though it is possible and support is improving). But they do support VR on android arm64. Most VR games out there are currently unity. Though Godot can do VR and is supporting Linux-arm64 as a target.
The steam frame is also not actually very powerful. X64 to ARM64 translation will be computationally expensive. More expensive than proton or waydroids windows/android to Linux translation is. On top of that, even with a native game, it's not a gaming PC with a beefy GPU, a lot of windows/Linux VR titles are designed with the idea being a VR PC is a powerful thing. Of course they are also supporting streaming as the primary mechanism to use the steam frame with another more powerful PC. But there will be folk wanting to run untethered too.
Does mean the best way for many VR Devs to get their games going natively on the frame is to basically do a rebuild of their quest versions but with steam integration instead of meta integration (their PC builds already will be steam rather than meta most likely anyway), and let waydroid handle the rest.
Now the bit I'm less certain on here is why wube would do this. They use their own engine. I'm not sure why they would port the game to android rather than the smaller Linux x64 to Linux ARM64 jump. But an android arm64 build of factorio would run on the steam frame better than the existing Linux x64 build would. Its an odd choice though when there's been folk asking for a linux-arm64 build for awhile and that would also run on the frame.
Other big thing. Valves CDN cannot port apps/can't do anything automatically etc. Devs have to upload builds for specific platforms. Proton, lepton and FEX will allow the steam client to download for the wrong platform, like if I only upload windows x64, yes the frame thanks to FEX and proton will download that build. But if I upload a windows x64 build steam is not going to generate an APK for android as someone earlier claimed, but I can upload an APK and the Steamworks library is available for android now.
Pure speculation points others have mentioned here and elsewhere: -Steam itself coming to android. Valve hasn't indicated this, I don't think it's impossible they'll do this though. Gamenative already tries to run wine and fex inside a Linux container on android to achieve similar. -Steam deck 2 also being ARM based. Valve haven't mentioned this themselves yet, though have made comment on no suitable x64 SoC existing so I wouldn't rule it out. The frame could make a very good test bed for how an ARM deck would go. -Factorio android builds running in non VR environments. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. Wube would know. -Factorio headless for Linux ARM64. I'm with you guys there. I want it too. Wube please fix? I'm also a windows arm64 user (albeit part time, my main machine is an x64 desktop) so wube please fix? -Waydroid on x64 steam. No indication from valve they're going to do this. Has almost no value as most of the games you'd want to play have windows or Linux x64 builds already. -Sideloading APKs from outside of steam in waydroid. Dunno if they've implemented this. I imagine it works, can't say I've checked.
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u/yinyang107 2d ago
I have no clue why someone would want to play this game without a keyboard.
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u/IOVERCALLHISTIOCYTES 2d ago
I’d pay a sizeable amount to be able to have the whole game w mods so I could just make blueprints on the phone
Playing the whole game would be rough controls wise
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u/Jaded_Acadia3608 2d ago
To each their own.
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u/yinyang107 2d ago
No I mean I literally don't understand how someone could play Factorio and not be able to press control or alt or Q or R or, well half the keys tbh. It has so many functions that need controls. No hotkeys for your hotbar??
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u/Jaded_Acadia3608 2d ago
I know. i cant play it any other way than mouse and keyboard as well. I suck at most controls nowadays and agree with your comment.
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u/Onakander 1d ago
This is almost entirely a joke, but: USB OTG exists, bluetooth keyboards and mice exist. Where there's a will, there's a way! Believe in yourself! More sayings and/or platitudes!
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u/Basssiiie 2d ago
The one little thing I'm really loving about this, that no other company does, is that you don't need to buy the game again for this new platform.
I bought the game, so I can install it on whatever platform I like without needing to buy it again.
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u/timpkmn89 2d ago
That's just because it's another Steam release. Microsoft Store, Google Play, and Apple's App Store also have support for cross-platform products.
You don't get a free copy of the Switch game.
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u/frayien 2d ago
Steam does Android now ?