Dangerous information in case you’re one of many handful of individuals utilizing Steam to play video games on a Chromebook: Google and Valve are getting ready to finish assist for the still-in-beta ChromeOS model of Steam on January 1, 2026, in keeping with 9to5Google. Steam can nonetheless be put in on Chromebooks, but it surely now comes with a discover asserting the top of assist.
“The Steam for Chromebook Beta program will conclude on January 1st, 2026,” reads the notification. “After this date, video games put in as a part of the Beta will not be accessible to play in your machine. We recognize your participation in and contribution to learnings from the beta program, which can inform the way forward for Chromebook gaming.”
Steam initially launched on Chromebooks in early 2022 as an alpha that ran on only a handful of newer and higher-specced units with Intel chips inside. A beta model arrived later that yr, with lowered system necessities and assist for AMD CPUs and GPUs. Between then and now, neither Google nor Valve had mentioned a lot about it.
The Steam beta was one part of a “gaming Chromebook” push that Google made in 2022 and 2023. It noticed the discharge of laptops with higher {hardware} and high-refresh-rate screens and optimized variations of GeForce Now and Xbox Cloud Gaming. Google had reportedly been working so as to add Steam assist to ChromeOS since no less than 2020.
