The name Lepton appeared on Steam and SteamDB just a few weeks after Valve unveiled the Steam Frame headset, which will be able to run Android apps.
In our new interview with Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais, he mentioned the Frame uses “a similar compatibility layer as Proton, just targeted at Android.”
[Image: https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/12/steam-lepton-header.jpg?quality=90&strip=all]
That is all really useful info to have. Google Play Games for Windows uses their own crosvm sandbox, which has a couple—but not many—hack-a-rounds to run regular apps & for Houdini (ARM translation). And Android source code makes multiple mentions of a container-based Android sandbox. What sucks is that Microsoft discontinued WSA & that Google won’t release a modern standard desktop-based Android layer because it is so “security-concious” (aka fragile) that they are worried about users abusing the APIs it exposes.