Are there any good ways to run Steam on a Chromebook?

The only way to nattily install steam on the laptop and run it, by first installing linux

There are always "ways". But one of the "best" is going to utilize In home Streaming.

First you get steam up and running on a powerful computer, then you install something like crouton, and then steam on the chrome book.

Finally, login to steam on both the powerful machine, and the chrome book, and you can play the game "from" your chromebook, but it's the powerful computer that's doing all the work.

If you don't have a x86 chrome book (most aren't) then you can try stuff like twerk and android streaming apps. They will work but's it's cludgy. See https://www.reddit.com/r/chromeos/comments/3kf73b/psa_you_can_stream_your_gaming_pc_to_your/ for an example.

Finally, though you may not want to hear it, you may be better of with something more dedicated. If you really want to stream to a portable then getting a cheap laptop around $200 and sticking XFCE on it with steam in home streaming is pretty awesome. Your not gonna get CS:GO to be fast enough to be competitive, but Civ 6 will do just fine.

Keep in mind, in all these options, it's the powerful computer that does all the work, not the portable.

I own an Acer 15 chromebook. in the download page of steam you should hit the tiny steam icon under the blue button. After installing linux to the chromebook open files app and click your new .deb file. hit the blue button that shows. it will install. once it installs you will launch steam and it will install itself. don't shut it during this.

THEN THE SIGN IN SHOWS UP! YAY!

(only one problem, you barely have space for games b/c Steam is hogging it all. they will also lag a lot at first but later it should be fine if you have the right settings in the game. I got Nuclear Throne to work just fine like this, so that's cool.)

As of 2016, this wasn't easily possible. However, newer Chromebooks have started to come with an option to enable a Linux VM, as part of the OS itself. This is easy to do in settings.

As the VM runs a Debian-based distro (GalliumOS), you'll need a .deb for Steam (or any other games or programs you wish to run). You can install it by typing:

sudo apt install ./steam.deb

(where steam.deb should be replaced with the name of the file)

Having done this (with Minecraft Java, not Steam), I'd warn you to check your device's specs. If the game requires good graphics hardware or a lot of RAM, you're probably out of luck. (On my Acer R11, I get 4-5 FPS on Minecraft Java, although it's not known for it's performance).

As for storing the games, external USB/SD storage is not yet supported, so you may run into issues with installing multiple large games.

Short Answer: NO!

Explained: Chromebooks were made as a way to access the internet- NOTHING ELSE. I have owned 5 chromebooks over the years, all different brands. In all of them, everything was sautered onto the motherboard. They have about 8gb of hard drive space on average and one core processor. I think that they have about 3gb of ram. None of these parts can be upgraded because everything is sautered, not allowing you to alter anything unless u know how to do sh!t. I beleive that the average chrome book can run shell shockers at 20-30 fps at 750p. This is compared to my pc with a sixth gen i5 and 650ti with 5 gb of ram having no issue consistantly running 90-100 FPS at 1080p on shell shockers. I have never tried downloading steam on a chrome book. I tried downloading cod mobile on it once and it just crashed the chrome book by giving me a scary message and the blue screen of death. If you are able to download steam, you will not even be able to download much less play any games.