Valve and Google are working on a native Steam implementation for Chrome OS.
On notebooks with Chrome OS, it might soon be possible to install the Steam client and play games using it according to Kan Liu, Google’s director of product management for Chrome OS.
So far, Steam has only been working with Crostini on Chromebooks, which was hard for inexperienced users. For Valve and Google, creating a native Steam client for Chrome OS shouldn’t be too much of a hassle, after all, the client is already available for Linux.
It is still not very viable for Chromebooks as they usually have entry level processors and integrated graphics, but Liu says that this might change as newer processors from AMD could be launched. There is also a talk of new Chromebook models with NVIDIA chips.
Valve has not yet commented on the topic. The step would probably make sense for the company because it opens up a new customer base with comparatively little effort.
As far as Google is concerned, the whole thing makes less sense. Instead of relying on Steam, the company could press for its in-house game streaming service Stadia which already runs on Chrome OS, and the performance of the hardware is irrelevant and part of the sales goes to Google instead of Valve.
The offer on Stadia is still very small, but that might change in the medium term. More than 120 titles are planned for launch in 2020.
