One of the biggest complaints with some PC games is that they only feature local co-op. Which usually means no co-op goodness for a majority of people. Well, Valve has had enough and will be debuting a new feature in Steam called “Remote Play” to put an end to this madness.
Today our team announced another great new platform feature that will be built into Steam: Remote Play Together. This will allow friends to play local co-op games together over the internet as though they were in the same room together. https://t.co/jEZyGoXEfc
— Alden Kroll (@aldenkroll) October 10, 2019
This feature, which is still very much a beta, will be available on Steam later this month. What it does is trick a game in believing that one or more players are sitting in front of the PC. When instead they could be next door or hundreds of miles away. Then you and that other person/s can play the game together. Which is going to be fantastic for those late-night sessions of Assault Android Cactus or Blazing Chrome. Now I won’t need to harass my children to play with me. They’ll love that.
“Your local multiplayer games will soon be improved with automatic support for Remote Play Together on Steam,” it reads. “All local multiplayer, local co-op, and split-screen games will be automatically included in the Remote Play Together beta, which we plan to launch the week of October 21.”
What’s nice about this all, is that this could also help devs by removing the messy ordeal of implementing online co-op or multiplayer. As long as local co-op is available, then Remote Play can handle the heavy lifting.
How does it work
As I’m understanding this, when Remote Play is started, the person who starts it acts as a host. Then Steam will relay the game bits (visuals, commands) to everyone else who’s connected to that session. So this is essentially streaming the game, which means there will be some limitations to this. So far I haven’t seen what the bandwidth requirements are or what the resolution settings need to be at. For the latency to be as low as possible, I’m guessing Valve will have some sort of recommended settings.
For those reading and this and wondering, if this sounds familiar, it is. Parsec, which allows you to install software on your PC and lets you play with others as if they were in your living room, has been doing this for years. The only difference here, on paper anyway, is that Steam will have all this and you won’t need to mess with anything else. That said, Parsec also has some requirements to use the service, and those are quite tame. I’m sure Valve’s Remote Play will be similar.
Remote Play will be available on Steam this October 21st, 2019. We play on giving it a try and will report our impressions.
