Google reportedly working on Steam support for Chrome OS

Chrome OS may eventually be capable of supporting and running games from Valve’s Steam platform, although you probably shouldn’t expect your Chromebook to easily run Red Dead Redemption 2 any time soon.

An exclusive interview between David Ruddock of Android Police and Kan Liu, Director of Product Management for Google’s Chrome OS, Liu said that the Chrome team is working on bringing Steam to Chromebooks.

Liu didn’t provide a timeline for when Chrome OS will start letting users play Steam games, but we can assume it’s probably going to be quite a wait. Google currently has the Stadia to focus on in terms of gaming and it might take a while to work out just how a gaming Chromebook would work.

Chromebooks are usually used for low-power tasks such as browsing the web, watching videos, and playing low-spec games. Typical users aren’t usually looking to play things like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare on their Chromebook.

However, Android Police reports that Liu says that “more powerful Chromebooks, especially AMD Chromebooks, are coming.” While Liu wouldn’t explicitly confirm that any future models would contain discrete Radeon graphics, these GPUs would still put newer Chromebooks far above the current models.

There’s been no official announcement from Google regarding the topic, but things still look promising. Even if Chromebook users didn’t want to use their devices for heavy duty gaming, having a wider range of more powerful options available usually tends to be a good thing.

Steam support on Chrome OS could also be a welcome alternative for those who don’t want to or can’t use Google Stadia, Google’s gaming streaming service.