Games that can be played through Steam are now available on even more Chromebooks | Media Pyro

What you need to know

• Google is bringing a native Steam experience to more Chromebooks.
• In order to try Steam Beta, you will need to be on ChromeOS beta 108.0.5359.24 or greater.
• The expanded list of Chromebooks now includes those powered by Intel Core i3, AMD Ryzen 3, and Intel 12th Gen CPUs.

For the better part of the past year, owners of select Chromebooks have been able to enjoy a native Steam experience on ChromeOS thanks to the Steam Alpha program. While the initial list of supported Chromebooks was pretty short, Google has announced that Steam Beta is rolling out and will bring some exciting changes.

First, part of the potential headache for those wanting to try out Steam Alpha on a compatible Chromebook was that you had to switch to the Dev Channel, fire up Crosh, and ensure that the orders were made correctly. Amazingly, Google has removed some of the overhead when it comes to playing Steam games on Chromebooks. With the update to ChromeOS Beta 108.0.5359.24, you’ll just have to enable the Borealis Chrome flag, then “simply search for “Steam” in the ChromeOS launcher to start the installation.”

Another potential frustration when trying to play Steam games on Chromebooks was that there weren’t many compatible options. Sure, the list consisted of some of the best Chromebooks, such as the Acer Chromebook Spin 713 and ASUS Chromebook CX9. But it still required Intel 11th Gen Core i5 or i7 processors, because those graphics are equipped with Intel Iris Xe graphics on board. And until now, you couldn’t try Steam on newer Chromebooks powered by Intel’s 12th Gen chip, like the Acer Chromebook Spin 714 or any of the new gaming-focused Chromebooks.