When it comes to volunteers porting games to platforms they haven’t been officially released for, the main characters are usually Doom and Quake, as Id Software has released many of its graphics engines as free software. However, that doesn’t mean these are the only titles that can be unofficially ported, as Reddit user zbios managed to run Half-Life 2 natively on Raspberry Pi and Apple Silicon.

Currently, Half-Life 2 continues to support macOS, or so the game file on Steam says, but if the compilation is for Intel processors, it will run on Rosetta, the compatibility layer and emulation architecture developed by Apple to run compiled applications. for x86 (Intel) on the Apple Silicon processors used by the latest generations of Macs.

Back on topic, running Half-Life 2 on a Raspberry Pi and natively on Apple Silicon (that is, compiled for the Apple ARM architecture) was possible. due to the Source Engine source code being publicly available as a result of the Team Fortress 2 source code leak in 2018.

The leaked source code was posted on GitHub under a ban on its commercial use, but unless Valve authorized it, the reality is that any reuse of that source code could be illegal. Regardless of the legal situation, from a technical point of view, the scenario is not fundamentally different from what was seen on other occasions with Doom and Quake.

Half-Life 2 running on Raspberry Pi.

According to a Reddit user, the performance of Half-Life 2 on each of the platforms is very uneven. On Raspberry Pi 4, it achieved frame rates between 15 and 20 at 720p and 10 fps at 1080p, although the experience was apparently stable. About Apple Silicon, more specifically a Apple M2, the situation changes radically by reaching a frame rate between 300 and 400 in the Ravenholm section depending on your version.

Although they are both ARM processors, the profile of each is very different. The Reddit user doesn’t rule out that other games like Portal could be ported, but some like Garry’s Mod are out of the question due to the modifications they have in the engine itself.

Will these initiatives encourage Valve to officially port Steam and its games to Android and other ARM-based platforms? From a technical point of view, it seems completely feasible, but another thing is that the company sees interest and/or commercial viability.