This may feel familiar, as Google itself erroneously leaked the news a few days ago, but today the company “officially” announced that they are officially launching Steam OS on Chrome OS. Before running to install it, a few notes: this is still an alpha release, only available on the more experimental and unstable Chrome OS Dev channel.
The number of supported devices is also still limited, as it requires at least 8GB of RAM, an 11th-generation Intel Core i5 or i7 processor, and Intel Iris Xe graphics. That’s a relatively high-end configuration for a device that’s usually meant to be highly affordable, and it’s a bit ironic that you can now play games on Chrome OS devices that are primarily designed for business users.
The list of supported games is also still limited, but at least includes games like Portal 2, Skyrim, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Half-Life 2, Stardew Valley, Factorio, Stellaris, Civilization 5, Fallout 4, Dico Elysium, and Trick or Treat.
While the graphics sometimes had to be set to medium or lower for these games to work, we didn’t expect to see a day when people were playing The Witcher on Chrome OS. But given that Steam has vastly improved support for Linux in recent years, and Chrome OS has landed on more powerful devices, it’s probably just a matter of time anyway.