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Steam’s new “Remote Play Together” feature will allow all local multiplayer games to work over the Internet

Valve has announced that it will be adding a new feature to Steam, called Remote Play Together. This feature will allow local multiplayer and co-op games to work over the Internet. As such, PC gamers will be able to play with their friends online the games that were not supporting online play previous (but obviously had support for local MP play).

Hidden in Plain Sight’s developer received the following email from Valve, detailing this feature.

As the email suggests, all local co-op and split-screen games will automatically support Remote Play Together. This will be crucial for a number of games, so kudos to Valve for implementing it.

Lastly, the beta phase for Remote Play Together will launch on October 21st.

41 thoughts on “Steam’s new “Remote Play Together” feature will allow all local multiplayer games to work over the Internet”

    1. It’s not massive. Nvidia has been doing it since 2015. The open source Moonlight client for Nvidia Gamestream has extended it over the Internet to even mobile clients well before this. This is Valve trying to play catchup with the new Internet game streaming crowd (PSNow, Stadia, Geforce Now, Microsoft’s xCloud or whatever it will be called) without actually having to use a cloud infrastructure to implement it.

        1. No, it hasn’t. I am not referring to streaming gameplay videos like Twitch. I am talking about the playing of video games using streaming technology. Steam’s “remote play” feature only worked for LAN/in-home networking before this new beta version.

    1. No, since this is just streaming the game from one PC to the other clients like how PSNow works or how Google’s Stadia will work but without the huge cloud infrastructure to handle the load.

      1. No, since this is just streaming the game from one PC to the other clients like how PSNow works or how Google’s Stadia will work but without the huge cloud infrastructure to handle the load. That is also why Valve is giving developers the choice to opt-out of this feature since it could hurt sales since only one player (the host) has to buy the game. These details are in the original post from the developer who received the email and in Valve’s subsequent statement on the matter. You should actually read them instead of spewing uninformed bullshit.

      1. Again that is NOT what this is. This is NOT a VPN of any kind. It’s game streaming. I am surprised you Steam fanboys don’t actually know what Steam’s Remote Play feature is. It’s not new. Only the Internet enabled part is.

  1. it would also be great if there was a option to turn all online co-op games into offline local co-op. a feature to consider.

    1. In this case, Valve are already leveraging something they’re already doing (streaming game video and inputs, like with the Steam Link) and repurposing it to send the video feed to the remote player, and have the remote player’s input act like another input device.

      To make online co-op available locally is something individual developers of each game would actually need to program themselves. Valve can’t take a game like PUBG or something and just make it splitscreen.

  2. That’s actually neat, but what SyberWeapon stated is much more important and Valve/Steam probably has the infrastructure to do something like that.

    1. Not much infrastructure is needed. Your just sending small amounts of data linking the two (or more) players games together. There’s PC console emulators that have done this for years.

  3. Curious to see how this ends up working. I’ve been using Parsec to accomplish the same thing. Parsec works well, better than nvidia’s method.

    1. This doesn’t have to be limited to local multiplayer games either. Works well for multi character turn based games like Xcom as well.

    1. No, that is not what this is. This is NOT a VPN of any kind. This is game streaming, i.e. Steam’s existing Remote Play feature, being enabled over the Internet. Nvidia’s GeForce Experience did this same thing back in 2015, but the feature was later pulled for Internet use most likely due to either poor performance/latency or game licensing issues. I don’t expect Valve to overcome the latency problem that is inherent in game streaming over the Internet.

    2. No, that is not what this is. This is game streaming, i.e. Steam’s existing Remote Play feature, being enabled over the Internet. Nvidia’s GeForce Experience did this same thing back in 2015, but the feature was later pulled most likely due to either poor performance/latency or game licensing issues. I don’t expect Valve to overcome the latency problem that is inherent in game streaming over the Internet.

  4. Kudos to Valve as usual, this time for implementing an official Hamachi into the client. This has been a long time coming i.e like 13 years I’ve been waiting for this. My friends and I used to use Hamachi to play CoH and RoN LAN over the internet when we were thousands of miles apart. Absolutely fine job, damn fine job. Smashing good damn good job chaps.

    1. No, that is not what this is. This is NOT a VPN of any kind. This is game streaming, i.e. Steam’s existing Remote Play feature, being enabled over the Internet. Nvidia’s GeForce Experience did this same thing back in 2015, but the feature was later pulled most likely due to either poor performance/latency or game licensing issues. I don’t expect Valve to overcome the latency problem that is inherent in game streaming over the Internet.

      1. Lmao you’re dumb. Completely wrong. What do you think remote play was if it didn’t work over internet ? How would it be remote? Do you know what remote means?

        1. Completely wrong. What do you think remote play was if it didn’t work over internet ? How would it be remote? Do you know what remote means?

          Wow, you Steam fanboys are really stupid. And, I mean really stupid. I could explain Steam’s Remote Play feature to you, but instead I’ll just let Valve do it: When you play a game using Remote Play, video and audio are sent through your home network from your high-end gaming PC to another device in your home. So, for the really stupid readers like yourself, “remote” means it works remotely within your home like the remote control for your television.

          With this new beta version, Remote Play will be extended to work over the Internet as well.

    2. No, that is not what this is. This is NOT a VPN of any kind. This is game streaming, i.e. Steam’s existing Remote Play feature, being enabled over the Internet. Nvidia’s GeForce Experience did this same thing back in 2015, but the feature was later pulled for Internet use most likely due to either poor performance/latency or game licensing issues. I don’t expect Valve to overcome the latency problem that is inherent in game streaming over the Internet.

  5. This will be crucial for a number of games

    No, this is not crucial for any games. As a matter of fact due to the inherent latency issues of streaming games over the Internet, it will actually ruin the game experience of some if not most games because local coop/splitscreen games are usually local due to the latency problems that would occur if the players were not all on the same computer in the same room.

      1. Hahaha. yeah F steam. lets all use EGS.. Less features the better. At least they dont ruin gaming due to latency problems.

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