If you’d asked about the state of gaming on ChromeOS or Linux a couple of years ago, people would’ve laughed you off as if you were talking about a distant dream coming true. Linux folks’ dream came true thanks to Proton, and the same is also changing the gaming landscape on ChromeOS as Steam Beta has finally arrived on ChromeOS.
As of writing this, Steam’s Beta client for ChromeOS is available for Chromebooks running ChromeOS Beta (108.0.5359.24) or above. However, the system requirement restrictions are still in place as this Steam Beta build requires at least 8GB of RAM, a 5000 series Ryzen 3 and above, or an Intel 11th Gen processor or above.
The list of supported devices has also been bumped from six Chromebooks to a current total of 20. Similarly, the list of games has also been bumped to 100 games from merely 20.
Mind you. Most of these games don’t have anti-cheats; hence, they work out of the box. Support for Easy Anti-cheat and Battleye is still not present, and there could be performance issues with Chromebooks boasting 8GB of RAM. External monitoring and scaling could also have issues or might straight up refuse to work in some cases.
To learn more about Steam Beta on ChromeOS, we suggest you check out the official project page on the Chromium Project website.
Confused state of Gaming on ChromeOS
On the other hand, we have Google and Valve pushing Steam on ChromeOS; on the other, we have the same company pushing cloud gaming Chromebooks, which raises the question, is there a chance we’ll see future Chromebooks with dedicated GPUs, or is Google trying to rely on Thunderbolt Port on devices for eGPUs? Whatever might be the case. The current state of gaming on ChromeOS is confusing.
If given a chance, what would you suggest to Google—to go down the cloud gaming path, the dedicated GPU path, or something else altogether? Let us know in the comments section below.
