Google Finally Announces Steam For Chrome OS

It's been expected for many months now, but Google today at their Game Developer Summit keynote formally announced that Valve's Steam gaming client is coming to Chrome OS.

Google is rolling out Steam in alpha form to Chromebooks. To no real surprise, it's initially targeting the higher-end Chromebooks given the stiffer requirements for running modern games in comparison to the specs of entry level Chromebooks. Steam on Chrome OS is also limited to the Intel/AMD x86_64 Chromebooks and not Arm.

Steam for Chrome OS does leverage the existing Steam Linux client code and makes use of Google's technology stack for handling native Linux applications within the confines of Chrome OS. Steam for Chromebooks / Chrome OS should be nice at least for some lighter games out there.

The Google for Games Developer Summit 2022 Keynote is embedded below where they also talk about their early stage work for Windows game emulation with Stadia using their custom code that's brewing as an alternative to Wine but leveraging some other components like DXVK.