One Reddit user in the r/ChromebookGaming subreddit detailed how he built a "controller cloak"—a 3D-printed shell that makes an 8BitDo controller look like a calculator case. Another discovered that if you open the Chrome Developer Console on a blocked site, you can inject a script that forces the Gamepad API to recognize a generic controller as an Xbox pad.
Then, the browsers evolved. In 2011, the W3C released the Gamepad API. For a decade, it was a niche curiosity for web developers. But around 2018-2020, as Chromebooks saturated the education market and Bluetooth controllers became cheap, the stars aligned.
And crucially, it respects your hands . The shift from keyboard to controller in a restricted environment is the same shift as from VHS to Blu-ray. It is a quality-of-life leap that, once experienced, cannot be undone.