Chromebook users are getting the ultimate gaming upgrade

If you love Chromebooks and gaming, Google has some great news for you: Steam for ChromeOS has moved out of alpha – tech shorthand for "play if you like but it might be messy" – to beta, which means it's pretty close to the final release.

According to The Chromium Projects, there are now some 50 games that are fully compatible with Steam on Chromebooks. Some are better than others – The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Fallout 4 need you to set graphics quality to medium or lower and require twice the RAM of most other titles – but it's an impressive list and an interesting alternative to shelling out on a Steam Deck if you've already got one of the best Chromebooks.

What Chromebooks run Steam for Chrome OS?

There are 20 models of Chromebook listed on the Chromium site, including multiple models from Acer, ASUS, HP and Lenovo. You'll need to enable the beta channel for ChromeOS, and your Chromebook needs to have a Core i3/Ryzen 3 or higher CPU with 8GB RAM or higher.

It's a really interesting time to be a gamer. More and more services are offering very impressive cross-platform options, and they're improving quickly: Microsoft has just finished migrating Xbox Cloud Gaming to a different platform that delivers much better results for browser-based users, and we've seen some impressive cloud gaming devices such as the Logitech G gaming handheld and the Razer Edge. 

We're some way from the cloud offering the same performance as a tricked-out gaming PC, Xbox Series X or PS5. But it looks like we're heading there fast.