Who needs to play full-power PC video games on a Chromebook? At least a number of individuals, presumably, since Google and its manufacturing companions have made “gaming Chromebooks” for a yr or so. But with some display upgrades and RGB keyboards, these machines are very clearly meant for use with cloud companies like GeForce Now, Xbox Game Pass, and Google’s personal ill-fated Stadia. It appears to be like like extra standard gaming laptops, full with devoted graphics playing cards, have been within the pipeline. Unfortunately, they’ve now been unceremoniously axed within the early improvement course of.

The information comes through developer commentary on Google’s public Chromium Gerrit. “Clean house on some dead [mother]boards,” writes the developer. “Herobrine, Hades, and Agah are all canceled.” As About Chromebooks reports (through Ars Technica), these codenames corresponded to motherboard designs destined for future ChromeOS-powered laptops or tablets, a frequent technique for eagle-eyed Google followers to get a peek at upcoming {hardware} specs. These three specific motherboards had discrete Nvidia laptop computer GPUs powering their graphics.

Google has been engaged on getting a version of Steam running in Chrome OS for some time. The system continues to be in beta now, accessible to check out, however there’s a purpose that it hasn’t graduated to the steady channel after almost a yr. Getting the complicated Linux model of the software program to play good on usually low-powered Chromebooks is a little bit of a headache, with the official documentation nonetheless itemizing points with window placement, exterior displays, UI scaling, audio and on-line chat, and Valve’s ubiquitous Easy Anti-Cheat system. Only twenty models get the official blessing and exterior storage nonetheless isn’t supported, a giant downside when PC recreation set up sizes are exploding and Chromebooks may need as little as 64 gigabytes of onboard storage.

And, in fact, the massive hurdle is that lack of discrete graphics card help, which implies video games performed domestically should be restricted to older titles or new video games with extraordinarily fundamental visuals. The abandonment of those in-development laptop computer motherboards doesn’t routinely imply that Google’s not enthusiastic about extra Chromebook gaming sooner or later — AMD and Intel each make discrete graphics for cell, in any case. But in case you’re hoping to fireplace up Baldur’s Gate III in your Chromebook anytime quickly, you’ll must do it through the cloud.