2026-02-02

So as you know, when I was trying the OrangePi 6 Plus on the official Debian distribution previously, I could not manage to run Steam using Box64. So this time again, using the new Ubuntu 24.04 Distro for the OrangePi 6 Plus, released by OrangePi at the end of December 2025, I tried my luck again and compiled Box64 again.

The Quest to Run Steam

I tried to launch Steam again, and unfortunately I had the same issue. It mentions some kind of Vulkan error that prevents the driver from launching the Steam instance. So I thought: okay, maybe there’s some issue with the Vulkan driver and there’s no way this is going to work with Box64, at least right now.

But can FEX, the Box64 alternative (supported directly by Valve for their new hardware) actually change anything? First I tried to compile FEX, but it’s actually a piece of software with a huge number of dependencies, and at some point the compilation failed and I could not really identify what caused the issue or how to fix it easily. But there was a way to download a pre-compiled binary, so I did that next.

And after some shenanigans related to the how FEX needs to have some RootFS to run, I was able to install and run Steam. And while the Steam interface was working reasonably well, running games was a different story. I could install several titles, but some of them refused to launch, and some 2D games could run, but they were running very, very slowly. Even for simple 2D games, I was having difficulty reaching more than 30 or 40 FPS. And my guess is that it probably detected that the Vulkan driver was not completely operational and switched to some software rendering instead of Vulkan. So on paper it works, but software emulation is way too slow to make a viable option.

At this stage, I thought this was the end of the road in terms of gaming experience, short of compiling some software or running some emulators.

Enter Heroic Launcher

Actually, I was wrong because there was another option out there. And I didn’t expect much out of it at first, but there’s Heroic launcher. This unofficial client can connect to your GOG and Epic Games Store accounts and launch games from there using Proton-GE or other WINE installs. It typically has builds for different OS, but mostly for X86 based ones, and ARM64 for the Mac following the recent architecture change (btw you can run Linux on the Mac and game with it?). And very recently, actually, it’s not apparently completely official, but if you look at the GitHub Actions builds inside the GitHub repository, once you are logged in (thanks PtitSeb for the find!), you will find that recent automated actions are generating ARM64 builds for Linux too. In AppImage format.

So I picked one of the recent ones, and I launched it. And it worked!

Now we have a great launcher running natively on ARM64, working fine just like for the regular X86_64 Heroic launcher builds. And I was able to log in into my GOG and Epic Store accounts and see the whole list of titles that I have on both stores. And then I tried to launch some games.

And I’m very surprised to say that there was some success. And first, I want to dispel some kind of fantasy that this can run all of games on the said stores. It’s not the case.

I think I tested maybe like 40 or 50 games. And among those, maybe half or a little less than half could launch and run properly. So I would estimate by my limited sample, maybe between 30 and 40% of games are going to launch and work as expected using this method. And there could be some issues related to dependencies that are not properly installed, or some wine configuration that could be improved for certain games (winetricks). So the compatibility may be better if you do spend some more time for every title. This being said, it looks like Heroic Launcher applies automatically a bunch of Winetricks for certain games, so it does some of the work for you already.

So the combination of:

• Box64 (compiled with Box32 to emulate 32 libraries)
• Heroic Launcher (ARM64 build)
• ProtonGE (downloaded directly by Heroic)

… are working well together to launch a bunch of games made for Windows on this ARM64 SBC running Ubuntu! Depending on the game, you can also apply the following flags in the launch options:

• Activating or deactivating WoW64 (a newer compatibility layer that allows 32-bit Windows applications to run on 64-bit systems)
• using BOX64_DYNAREC_CALLRET=1 (on increase the dynarec execution speed for Box64)
• using PROTON_USE_WINED3D11=1 (makes you rely on the DirectX11 implemention from WINE instead of DXVK - slower, but has less requirements for graphics driver)
• using PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 (uses only DirectX calls from WINE and nothing else)
• BOX64_MMAP32=0 (forces mmap to allocate inside the 32bit address space for 32bit processes)

And even fairly demanding games. And this is probably one of the first time, I think, that we have an ARM64 SBC, that actually is launching Civilization VI, the full Windows game. And I can prove to you that it’s running.

Civilization VI on OrangePi 6 Plus

And not only is it running, it’s running very well. The game is very playable. Of course, I’m not going to push a game at maximum graphical settings. But between low and medium settings, it’s running at 60 fps at least the beginning of the game. See for yourself below:

Alas, the fun is kind of short-lived, since the game tends to freeze after a few minutes typically - this is probably some kind of bug related to Box64 that will need fixing, and PtitSeb (the main dev behind Box64) is now aware of it. Once that bug will be fixed this means you will be able to play hours and hours on this kind of game, on a small ARM64 board.

I tried a couple of other demanding games such as Cities Skylines. It’s now a couple of years old now, but it runs well too, and this is the Windows version, not the Linux client.

Other Games

You want more examples? We have the Talos principle running extremely well on this device, at medium settings and full HD resolution, at solid 60 fps. Very impressive. I compiled a video below of other games that I tried that worked well.

Don’t mind the crackling sound issue, this is due to OBS recording the games right as I was playing, causing some sound glitches now and then. The framerate is also better when OBS is not recording, obviously. What is there to say? The fact that Crusader Kings 2 and Cities: Skylines work great unlocks several hundreds of hours of potential gaming on this device.

Is this the future?

So, while Steam does not launch properly, at least with the hardware acceleration, we are for now left with Heroic launcher that actually does a solid job to launch and run quite a few games for us, along with Box64 in the background. And not just very small games, as we have just seen. So we now know that we are not limited to emulation for serious gaming on this device, and if we manage to unlock Steam at some point with Box64, we may see a lot more games running on this hardware.

There’s no denying that the ARM64 landscape is changing, and there’s a lot of untapped power on this kind of hardware. If you were to couple this with a more powerful integrated GPU (thinking about further iterations on this SBC), there’s no denying that we may not be too far from an ARM64 device that could run a lot of Windows games with Proton.