Google officially ends support for Steam on Chromebooks

I remember the initial excitement like it was yesterday. The idea of having a native Steam client on ChromeOS—code-named Borealis—was a bold, ambitious, and incredibly exciting prospect. It promised to bring a legitimate, high-end PC gaming experience to Chromebooks in a way we’d never seen before. But today, the era of that experiment is officially coming to a close.

Google is now beginning to show a message to users informing them that as of January 1st, 2026, Steam on Chromebook will be discontinued. And while a small part of me is a tad bummed to see it go, the realistic part of me completely understands why. The truth is, it just makes sense for those resources to go elsewhere.

A great idea that never quite found its footing

The core problem with Steam on Chromebooks was never the idea; it was the hardware. For the project to truly succeed, we needed a wide range of powerful, GPU-equipped Chromebooks to hit the market. And frankly, those devices never really materialized. While a handful of high-end Chromebooks could handle some Steam games, the vast majority of devices simply weren’t built for that kind of demanding local gaming.

Because of this, the user base for Steam on Chromebooks was always going to be incredibly small. It was a fantastic endeavor for enthusiasts, but I’d wager that very few people were actually using it on a daily basis.

The rise of cloud gaming

While native Steam support struggled to find its place, another form of gaming has absolutely flourished on ChromeOS: cloud gaming. In the years since Steam for Chromebooks was announced, services like NVIDIA’s GeForce NOW have become so incredibly good that they offer a far superior experience for the vast majority of users.

Why spend a ton of engineering resources trying to get a handful of native games to sort of run on hardware that isn’t built for it, when you can stream thousands of AAA PC games flawlessly from the cloud on even the most affordable Chromebook? Cloud gaming makes the hardware question almost irrelevant, which is a perfect fit for ChromeOS.

It’s always a little sad to see a cool project sunset, but this feels like the right move. Shutting down the native Steam experiment allows Google to focus its resources elsewhere and implicitly acknowledges that the true future of high-end gaming on Chromebooks is in the cloud. So, while we mourn the end of a great idea, we’re also excited for a future where services like GeForce NOW continue to make our Chromebooks incredible gaming machines.