It's good for Valve bc if furthers their independence from Windows. again, potentially using google services or even the Stadia backend to do so. Moreover, as game developers and platforms start to migrate a lot of their workloads to the cloud, Steam might be able to provide a more seamless way to do so (proton?). It's good for google bc you'll potentially attract more users to ChromeOS and once they're on ChromeOS, I'm sure they'll have more exposure to Stadia and other google services. If not, then it sounds like working with google (maybe others too) to get Steam running on ChromeOS is a fantastic idea that doesn't conflict with any of their own ambitions. does Steam provide any sort of services that manage the runtime of games or is the majority of the game still dependent on the users rig? remote GPU workloads/rendering, managing game-play coordination, etc? but still, it certainly could be on the horizon. Given this launch only applies to newer Intel processor based Chromebooks, that day is not today. Lower end devices will be getting more and more powerful and eventually I'm sure even reasonably priced Chromebooks will be able to play games decently. This is unfortunate, but perhaps it's OK. I assume they would fight to earn additional money on game streaming, even though the money simply isn't there. For example, a litany of AAA game companies do not allow their games to be streamed via GeForce Now, even though it would be running your own copy that you bought from your Steam or other library.

There's also other very irritating issues. Considering how expensive GPUs are, is it even possible the prices for an on-demand gaming service could ever make that much sense? With Stadia, they are making you buy the games through Stadia itself, where they would get a cut of the revenue, which probably helps subsidize the actual cost of the service a bit more.

I do see how this could be more appealing for consumers, but aside from competing with themselves, I also would be curious about the economics. I find it difficult to believe they'd offer this, given that they already have Stadia.

Then the next step is that Google Cloud offers you an on demand high end gaming machine, pay by the minute, which runs Steam on Windows x86 and has an instant VPN to your Chromebook.

Chrome os steam link