Like a civil war in Africa, it was a revolution of which the general public was ficed madly: the arrival of Steam on Chromeos – and therefore, the Chromebook office devices – in 2022 in a first version before offering a simplified installation in 2023 with the Chromeos 119 update. If you are not familiar with these devices, Chromebook are Google devices and the web devices and the google devices Cloud under Linux distribution. Google then wanted to open its platform to gaming beyond compatible Android applications or cloud gaming.
Moreover, the Steam Chromeos version was quite interesting on paper: encapsulated in a virtual machine that turns under distribution Arch Linux, it promised to play a selection of games compatible with automatic updates for drivers and other necessary software in order to respect the ideal of extreme simplicity behind the Chromebook. But it was on paper. Between compatibility concerns and thin machine performance of Chromebook, the Chromeos version of Steam officially supports only a very small hundred various and varied games (Half-Life 2, Life is Strange 2, Noita …). Not enough to bazard his pc gaming.
In the end, this Steam Chromeos version has never left beta and will never even get out of it, since a new message to the installation specifies that the program will be abandoned on January 1, 2026. After this date, you will no longer be able to play your Steam games on your Chromebook. Google indicates that the data collected during this very, very long beta will be used for ” Specify the future of gaming on Chromebook “, But a priori, it will end as Stadia: in a drawer.
However, as the specialized site Fundroid recalls, Google confirmed that Android and Chromeos were to merge in the medium term. For Chromebook, the future of gaming may be written in Android applications, if it is to be written.
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