Chromebooks have never quite been full-blown gaming machines, but they’ve gotten more gaming-capable in recent years. Some Chromebooks are good enough to handle cloud gaming, but more importantly, there was a version of Steam for Chromebooks that allowed ChromeOS gamers to play some of the games on Steam.
Unfortunately, that may no longer be the case soon. As reported by 9to5Google, Google will be discontinuing support for Steam on Chromebooks come next year.
The ChromeOS version of Steam debuted in 2022 as a beta, but it hasn’t been updated in a while now. As of this writing, you can still install Steam on Chromebooks via the ChromeOS Launcher, but you’ll see a warning message before the installation goes through:
“The Steam for Chromebook Beta program will conclude on January 1st, 2026. After this date, games installed as part of the Beta will no longer be available to play on your device. We appreciate your participation in and contribution to learnings from the beta program, which will inform the future of Chromebook gaming.”
If you want to continue gaming on a Chromebook in 2026 and beyond, your options will be limited to apps via the Google Play Store, apps via the Linux subsystem, or games streamed via the cloud.
This article originally appeared on our sister publication PC för Alla and was translated and localized from Swedish.
