How to Install and Play Steam Games on a Chromebook in 2021

It says i need alot of space to download games but i have more than the needed space on my chromebook and it only says i have 3 gigabites when i have atleast 30. please help!!!

Everything worked fine until I tried running a few of my games. It looks like they’re all compatible via steam play, but when I hit run a window that should have the game opens for a second and then immediately closes. The window is completely blank with a bunch of boxes at the top part where it can be dragged.

Totally late at this point but for other people who are just figuring this out as well. Once linux has installed and opened steam, the game will say that its non-installable. Go click on the settings button right next to the info button, open properties, configuration and click the one button available on that page. From there it should ask if you want to add to home bar or shortcut. Tada! Hope this helps

i get an error everytime this is the error

E: https://deb.debian.org/debian-security buster/updates/main amd64 libjavascriptcoregtk-4.0-18 amd64 2.30.4-1~deb10u1 is not (yet) available (404 Not Found [IP: 2a04:4e42:58::644 443])
E: https://deb.debian.org/debian-security buster/updates/main amd64 libwebkit2gtk-4.0-37 amd64 2.30.4-1~deb10u1 is not (yet) available (404 Not Found [IP: 2a04:4e42:58::644 443])

not exactly sure what to do, id like some help. thanks 🙂

steam paly games

i keep getting this error saying it needs 250mb but i have 3g

so i tried to do this and didnt have enough space so steam partally downloaded but i cant get steam to launch to finish and also whenever i launch linux it says [Error starting penguin container: 50
Launching vmshell failed: Error starting crostini for terminal: 50 and i cant type. PLS HELP!

It all installed fine but wont let me log in, keeps saying user name or password is incorrect, I have reset passwords and checked I am entering correctly but it just wont accept them?
Anyone else got this issue? any suggestions?

Managed to get as far as installing steam, but on launch it goes to update but fails with Fatal error and steam needing to be online to update. The laptop is connected to the internet fine and no issues. Anyone else get this and found a solution?
Oh I downloaded the .deb file direct from the steam website.

thanks OP & commenters for your help
sucessful install
hope I can run games

where is the return button

I keep getting this error : You are missing the following 32-bit libraries, and Steam may not run:
libc.so.6

Any tips? Ive tried updating too and nothing

Alright so I fixed my problem with the deb file and what I did is went to my account on Steam, now I do not have Steam installed, I have an account and what I did was got to the top right where it shows my email. So I click on my email and it then shows View Profile, Account Details, Logout, preferences, etc. So click on preferences and your going to go all the way to the bottom where it says “Platform Preferences”. And underneath it it’ll say Operating Systems and there’s 3 boxes you can check Windows, Mac OS X, and SteamOS + Linux. Check the last one and then go back to the install, under windows click on Steam and once it downloads, go to your files and find the Steamdeb file and click it and then you might be able to install it.

When you get to the install Steam page dont click the windows installation, underneath it you’ll see the apple icon and the steam icon. Click the steam icon and that will download the deb file so once that is finished go to the file and you should be able to install it. When your done with that just message back.

Got everything working on Samsung chromebook 4, I can open my downloaded steam games but game pads are not recognized. I’ve tried wierd Xbox 360 & Logitech controllers. I’m bummed to get this far and hit a roadblock. Anybody know how I can fix this?

I got to the part of downloading Steam through the Linux installer. It just says error, and that there is not enough storage. It says to run ‘dpkg — configure -a to correct the problem, but I have no clue what to do from there. I have most of my files taken off of my Chromebook and it still says I have only 1.8 Gb of storage left but I didn’t think this was a big download. Anyways, Chromebook is dumb for taking up 7.3 GB from the “system” itself and only putting 15 GB of data on the device in total.

IT WORKED! But tbh, there are a lot of other steps you need to take apart from what’s shown here to actually make it work.

holy shit it actually works

is this clickbait? it looks reliable.

yeah i have the same problem is this clickbait? it looks reliable.

okay so like, after i got it installed and everything it simply said, cannot run steam without internet connection, even though im connected, help ;-;

simple fix add more storage

Once i ran the commands in order, I received the same messages, however I was able to use the linux installer to run the install by just going to steams website, and downloading the linux (steam) installer. worked like a charm.

All went well until: “sudo apt install steam”

It said this:
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
steam:i386 : Depends: libgl1-mesa-dri:i386 but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libgl1-mesa-glx:i386 but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

Can anyone help?

App drawer? how do i get to this?

For me it says: Unable to locate package steam. How do i fix this?

how do i get around this error message?

This file is designed for a PC using Windows software. This is not compatible with your device running Chrome OS. Please search the Chrome Web Store for a suitable replacement app.

I am having the exact same problem, it says does not support this device

the install button is gray, is there any way to fix this?

I have steam but cannot install any of the games I have, any ideas?

didnt download for

The mini window for Steam didn’t pop up after I went through all the other steps. I tried typing in steam but it says: /usr/games/steam: 16: /usr/games/steam: /home/maddieg727/.steam/ubuntu12_32/steam: Exec format error
tar: This does not look like a tar archive
xz: (stdin): File format not recognized
tar: Child returned status 1
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

How do I fix this?

Hey I downloaded steam but when I try and boot it up the app just loads and wont open

Ryan did you find a fix for the grayed install button?

E: Type ‘echo’ is not known on line 5 in source list /etc/apt/sources.list
E: The list of sources could not be read.

How did you fix it, if I could ask

We are having the same issue. Were you able to get it resolved?

i am having this same issue. i am trying to install fall guys and its gray.

I now have steam but i cant install games. i bought fall guys and it wont let me install it.

someone help fix this please i typed down everything correctly and it came up with this
sudo apt install steam
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
E: Unable to locate package steam

it says unable to locate package steam . what do i do?

What am I supposed to do when It says Error starting penguin container :13
Launching vmshell failed: Error starting crostini for terminal :13

my previous issue was resolved, however, the install button is grayed out. Please help.

please help the mini window for steam never appeared after the installation.

This was the only tutorial that worked on my machine. After the install I was never prompted for a login so I just typed steam into the command line. When it updated and opened, it then asked to login and after that I was able to browse my collection and play games. You might have to allocate more memory under the storage management section in settings for linux then restart the linux app and steam.

When I type sudo apt update it give this error:
‘sudo’ is not known on line 3 in source list /etc/apt/sources.list
E: The list of sources could not be read.
What should I do?

the window for steam didnt show up for me and if it did where can i find it?

Everything works fine until I try to download a game. Everything pops up like it should, then when I hit download it says “An error occurred while updating the game (invalid platform”

I’m seeing this error

You are missing the following 32-bit libraries, and Steam may not run:
libc.so.6

i downloaded steam through this process but when i go to download rise of nations the install button is greyed out. The game is already purchased

Hi, I was able to install steam and download Binding of Isaac. However when I hit play to launch the game within the Steam app, it launches a little window which promptly disappears. The game never launches. The play button in Steam switches to Launching and then back to Play. I tried sudo apt update and upgrade and it didn’t help.

Any recommendations?

I have a Chromebook and I just followed the steps to download Steam and it worked out perfect! But when I try to play a game (such as VRChat) it says “Error.” Do I need to download Unity too?

I am getting the following error. You are missing the following 32-bit libraries, and Steam may not run:
libc.so.6

Okay, so when I type in Sudo apt update, what I get is this message = E: Malformed entry 4 in list file /etc/apt/sources.list (Absolute suite component). What should I do

Doesn’t work whatsoever if you’re trying to do it give up

my friend and i were trying to get this to work in order to play stardew on her chromebook, and it seems like we got through everything. steam is downloaded and stardew was installed. but once she tried to open stardew, steam froze and it wouldn’t load at all. we’ve tried to uninstall and reinstall steam and the game itself multiple times, but nothing has worked yet. are we overlooking something that’s super simple? we got so close but we weren’t able to run the game 🙁

When I opened steam it says it failed to install so what should I do

I wrote in the first 3 commands, and nothing happened.

the mini window never popped up, idrk what to do.

Everything seems to be working out and I can get into Steam, but when I try to play/download any of the games, it says “An error has occurred while updating *game* (invalid platform)”. Do I need to setup something like Wine (if so, please explain to me the steps/commands)? If not, then is it not possible to play any Steam games on a Chromebook (I have an Acer Chromebook 13)? It took me around 45 minutes to install Steam on my Chromebook because problems kept popping up and know I feel I did it for nothing.

I tried and went through with everything here, and it does say its updating steam, but when it finishes and moves on to extracting steam, it says it cant because it failed to load steamui.so? what can i do to make it work?

I followed all the steps all the way to selecting “I AGREE” and the installation continued to completion, but no steam log-in came up. How do I get that to happen? (I have absolutely ZERO Linux experience)

i get the command
$sudo apt install steam
up to this point everything is doing what it should, but when i reach the install point i get this message
reading package list… done
building dependency tree
reading state information… done
E: unable to locate package steam
so now i dont know what im supposed to do, i do have decent knowledge techwise and and more than competent on windows platforms but im a complete newcomer to linux.
please help
kieren roberts