I found Munchkin, one of my favorite all-time card games, on Google Play Games for $5.99. On Steam, it’s $14.99. That’s $9 I could spend on some avocado toast, so I went to download the title from Google.
It was unavailable, despite being advertised on Google Play Games’ storefront.
That one moment is indicative of my general experience with Google Play Games: what they advertise isn’t really what you’ll get. Google promises 20,000 plus games in its catalog (compared to Steam’s 120,000 – 146,000 claims) and pushes the whole “bu7y once, play anywhere” promise as a way to compete with the venerable Steam platform. So I spent a little time trying to actually make the switch.
I was pretty disappointed.
The numbers game
It’s very misleading
Google advertises 200,000 games on its main web page, but that number includes PC and mobile games. There’s no official breakdown of how many mobile games are actually playable on your PC, either, leaving us to experiment and figure it out on our own.
Steam has around 235,000 games, according to data analysts at BackLink, and they’re all for PC (or Mac or Linux), with no issue.
The problem I found with Munchkin can’t be that rare, as Google has its own dedicated “Unavailable instead of Download” page, a thread for “This game can’t be played on this PC,” and a developer community thread specifically for “my game is not available.” Heck, there’s an entire help center page for NCSoft games not being available on PC while working on Android.
Google does have a tiered system to let you know how well Play Store games work on PC, with Optimized, Playable, Untested, Unsupported, and Not available (like Munchkin). You don’t build out infrastructure like that unless you know there’s a problem.
Casual vs Core
Two different audiences
To be clear, Google Play Games leans heavily on free-to-play and mobile ports, like Genshin Impact, Honkai, idle games, and match-3 titles. Steam has those, for sure, but also triple-A games, indie games, simulation titles, and niche cult classics. While Google Play promised to add more “real” PC games at GDC 2026, my experience felt more like a mobile app game store than anything else.
The vibe is also very different. Play Games feels more like an app store than a gaming platform. Steam has spent years making their app and store the go-to destination for PC gaming, and it shows.
And yes, Google Play Store promises that you can buy once, play everywhere, but that’s only going to work for games that support PC and have cross-save. That’s likely a much smaller list than advertised. Steam has Steam Deck, Remote Play, and cloud saves that, while imperfect, do offer a broader coverage of “play beyond the PC” titles.
My experience trying to actually use it
I was underwhelmed
Sure, I started with a sad Munchkin revelation, but I figured I’d keep digging in to find games I actually wanted to play on my PC. I do love a good tower defense game, but a quick search on Google Play turned up so many games that looked like mobile apps ported to PC. One game that said it was optimized for PC looked like a clone of Kingdom Rush, a mobile game I’ve spent plenty of time with on my iPhone and iPad. And yes, I checked to see who the developer is, and it isn’t Ironhide Games.
So I went looking for some games I have on Steam over at the Google Play Store. Terrafoming Mars: no go. Rust or Icarus (survival games I play all the time on Steam)? Not a chance. A search for Palia, a game that feels casual to me, turned up suggestions for Genshin Impact, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery, and Wuthering Waves. All decent casual-ish games, but not the one I wanted.
So I figured I’d try the other direction. What games that looked good on Google Play Store weren’t on Steam. Honesty, I didn’t find many. Kingdom Rush (all the versions) is on Steam, as is Asphalt Legends. OK, fine – Clash Royale and Clash of Clans, Supercell’s older hit castle defense multiplayer games from a few years back, are on Google Play but not Steam. So if you want to play these on your PC, Google Play is the way to do it.
What Google gets right
And where it needs to catch up
Competitive pricing is a very real thing. I’m always checking out Steam Sales or Epic Games Store for titles I want to grab but don’t want to pay full price for. Dungeon Clawler, for example, is only $7 on Google Play Games and $15 on Steam. If enough of the games you want to play are discounted like that, you could save some real cash.
Google Play also has a platform-wide system for game trials, and Steam only has demos and one-off timed trials (like Dead Space in 2023). If that’s important to you, along with cross-device compatibility (PC and Android at least), Google Play could be the spot to go.
Still Google Play has a long wat to go to beat out Steam. It needs a larger curated PC library, for one, and maybe a few higher-end triple A titles to boot. That might get the mid-tier gamers who use Steam to move over and start building their own Play library, especially if some price pressure can be placed upon Valve’s platform.
The verdict
For casual or mobile first-players, Google Play Games on PC can have a real upside, with try-before-you-buy and lower prices to tempt them across the aisle. For anyone whose PC gaming includes triple-A or other mid-tier games, Steam likely already has it, so there’s no reason to move to a Google ecosystem. Steam feels like it was built for PC gamers, while Google Play Store feels like it was made for phone gamers who want to continue their games on a PC. Neither is wrong, per se; I just tend to be in the second group, and I’m betting a lot of you are as well.
