Google Finally Announces Steam For Chrome OS

[geearf]

It was stupid before, but it's looking even more stupid that Google had most OEMs provide the minimum storage possible to promote cloud storage.
What good is a device with 20GB of free space for Steam?

Many games can fit easily in those 20Gb, it's not that bad.
I had a Chromebook for a while and played Steam games with it, I just attached a USB drive to it for what it could not hold natively.

[ezst036]

Phoronix: Google Finally Announces Steam For Chrome OS

Why did they take a moment? What spyware did they build into it/around it? Everything Google does exists for the purpose of espionage, why would this be any different?

[Developer12]

Hopefully there is more to it. Right now Valve's goal involves a compatibility for a competing OS. I can't imagine that's the end goal. With Stadia and ChromeOS Crotini, Google has experience running AAA games and regular desktop apps on a Debian based platform. Perhaps, Valve can use some of that for a cross distro gaming platform? Probably alot of wishful thinking but it's possible.

I don't think stadia is a competitor in any meaningful sense. It's a dead platfrom walking. It's very clear at this point that google didn't know what they were getting themselves into and now want out. They figured shitboxes that run gmail could support multiple users running AAA games, and that it would be cheap to run a leading game studio.

With this initiative, it extends valve reach even further at little cost to them (google is doing the heavy lifting for compatibility) and google gets to take another shot at trying to make chromeos popular for *anything* other than the education market.

[Redfoxmoon]

How little Google understands the wants and needs of gamers becomes evident when they literally start their keynote talking about diversity in gaming. That is going to be offputting to more folks than it attracts players. Not to mention that there are more pressing topics for Google to address. Stadia anyone?

They're religious zealots, of course they're going to preach about their non-theistic religion.

[kylew77]

With this initiative, it extends valve reach even further at little cost to them (google is doing the heavy lifting for compatibility) and google gets to take another shot at trying to make chromeos popular for *anything* other than the education market.

Google's extensions to the Linux kernel make ChromeOS the most responsive Linux distro out there. When trying to decide between a Windows Laptop running a *BSD or a custom Google hardware Chromebook running ChromeOS the decision was tough but came down to the Chromebook. The way it makes memory use easy is second to none and is a high security environment too. I love ChromeOS because it remembers everything about me, my credit card number, auto fills in forms, remembers all my passwords for me all in the OS and browser. Lots of enterprises are moving to Chromebooks vs windows laptops and for good reason.

[TheLexMachine]

Google recently released the beta for Google Chrome Flex OS. While many Chrome devices are low-end and few are mid-range, some of them actually have replaceable RAM and SSD in their designs, so you can give an old Chrome laptop or desktop (or whatever) new life by upgrading and installing Chrome Flex, or you can install it on an old Windows/Linux machine that is still functional and upgradable.

[user556]

Just a few more nails in the coffin for Stadia.
At least it's cute that they, uh, are naming some Windows emulation layer after it?

*Translation* layer! You don't emulate an API/ABI. If you did, then every OS release is another emulation of itself.

[ruthan]

I hope Android x86 would be next and after Android arm, there is already Steam for Windows arm.

[Quackdoc]

Why did they take a moment? What spyware did they build into it/around it? Everything Google does exists for the purpose of espionage, why would this be any different?

I can't comment on much, but I do know that they at least require kernel 5.16. as for the system reqs, it shouldn't be all too high, but steam on chromeos uses KVM+crosvm and virtio-gpu venus (and likely zink) for gpu acceleration. so fleshing that out alone could have been the delay.

this is all theory, would love if we could get a comment on it, but another point of delay may have been getting virtio-video working (or is it vdec they are using???) for video acceleration. I'm not sure how wine/dxvk handles vaapi (if at all, I remember seeing wine staging had issues at one point, dunno if they got resolved), nor do I know how many games may or may not utilize it. but I assume on a laptop like most chromeos devices tend to be, that could be quite beneficial to have.

EDIT: I just want these to both be availible in qemu lol

[Quackdoc]

I hope Android x86 would be next and after Android arm, there is already Steam for Windows arm.

if the rumors about android 13 support kvm are true we might just be able to get this. I haven't tried compiling androidx86 kernel with KVM, but on arm devices, with a custom kernel you can get qemu to use KVM via termux iirc