Google says Steam is coming to ‘select’ Chromebooks

The rumors of Steam coming to Chromebooks were true. As 9to5Google reports, Google mentioned in its Games Developer Summit keynote that a Steam alpha test for Chrome OS will be available for “select” Chromebooks. Details weren’t available as of this writing, but Google pointed would-be players to a (currently unavailable) Chromebook community forum post. We’ve asked the company for more information.

A February leak at 9to5 may have revealed the initially supported hardware. At the time, Steam would only run on a trio of Acer Chromebooks (including the Spin 713), ASUS’ Chromebook CX9 and Flip CX5, HP’s Pro c640 G2 and an unnamed Lenovo model. You might be limited to models with at least an 11th-gen Core i5 and 7GB of RAM, too. This wouldn’t be shocking given the demands of many Steam games, but it might rule out many entry-level laptops and well-known models like the Galaxy Chromebook 2.

This will be an alpha, and there are already hints Google will widen support. The bigger question might surround gaming. Which titles will work? Will Steam developers need to optimize games for Chromebooks? All the same, it might be welcome for gamers who’ve wanted a Chromebook but wanted more to play than Android games and cloud services could offer.