The Steam alpha is finally arriving on select Chromebooks

theverge.com:

Google says that an alpha version of Steam is finally available for Chrome OS users with specific machines to test, as long as they’re willing to put a beta OS on their computer. This announcement comes after the company prematurely said Valve’s PC game store was available last week before changing its tune to say it would be “coming soon.” While Google’s John Maletis, a Chrome OS VP, calls it “early days” for the software, it’s exciting that we’re finally going to get a peek at what the Steam experience will be like on Chromebooks.

Google says that the alpha will only be available on “a small set of recent Chromebooks,” as it’s focused on “devices where more games can run well.” (It’s also limited to certain configurations of those computers — more on that in a second.) According to a blog post from the company, those Chromebooks are:

There are a few other additional caveats to note: Google’s only opening it up for configurations of those Chromebooks that have Intel XE graphics, an 11th-gen i5 or i7 processor, and at least 8GB of RAM. The company also notes that if a game requires 6GB of RAM, it may not work very well with a laptop that has 8GB of RAM. There are also apparently “performance and scaling” issues with screens that run at above-1080p resolutions, which Google is working on fixing.

The install process also reflects the early state of the software — according to a post from Google, it involves switching your computer to the Dev channel version of Chrome OS, setting a flag, and entering a terminal command. After you’ve gone through all that, though, you should be ready to test out Steam and the games that come with it (Google has a list of which ones it recommends trying out, some of which have a few