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Update 17/10: Valve confirmed over email that Remote Play Together will work on Linux.


The Steam pipes are leaking over at Valve again, as an upcoming feature called Remote Play Together is coming during the week of October 21.

Valve sent word just to game developers, which they never keep quiet on for very long. Multiple game developers (#1, #2 and so on) ended up putting out posts on Twitter to let everyone know about it a bit earlier than Valve seems to have intended. Here's what it says (from this image):

We're reaching out to let you know about a new feature heading to Steam

Your local multiplayer games will soon be improved with automatic support for Remote Play Together on Steam. Remote Play Together is a new Steam feature that enables two or more players to enjoy local multiplayer games over the internet, together.We think this feature will be very valuable for customers and developers and are excited about the beta. We've provided an FAQ at the bottom of this message which we think addresses most questions and concerns.

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.

While other services have existed for a while to allow local multiplayer titles to be played with your friends across the net, like Parsec which I tested some time ago for a different purpose, having this built into the Steam client is a fantastic idea. Think of all those fantastic local multiplayer titles you could enjoy all over again, without needing to have someone sat right next to you.

Confirming it's true, Valve developer Alden Kroll explained on Twitter in reply to a question about LAN games:

To clarify: it really is only for shared-screen or split-screen games. The tech is streaming your screen to your friend and capturing their input and sending it back to the game, so you are both playing the same game, looking at the same thing.

You can also see more details in this post on the Unity forum, which shows the bits missing from the linked picture and tweets quoted above. So only one person needs to own the game and you invite others to join you. It's really great to see Valve continue to innovate with the Steam client features.

I think I'm going to enjoy this.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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14 Oct 10, 2019
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Games I want to try this on:

Salt & Sanctuary
CastleStorm
Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light
The Swords of Ditto

There are other games that never made it to my collection/wishlist because they were local-only multiplayer.
Schattenspiegel Oct 10, 2019
OK, maybe that is only my shitty connection to the interwebs, but last time i watched a stream of a friend playing a game on steam there was quite a bit of a delay involved. That would suggest it's more or less intended for turn based stuff for patient people?


Last edited by Schattenspiegel on 10 October 2019 at 1:04 pm UTC
woox2k Oct 10, 2019
Quoting: Schattenspiegelquite a bit of a delay involved.
That's my main concern as well. Not only does it need to send low latency stream to remote client, it also has to receive input from there adding to overall latency. At the same time the person hosting has no such delays making competition coops totally unfair and frustrating. One way would be to run the entire game in background and stream to local player as well while adjusting buffer sizes to match the delay on the remote client. No idea if that's even possible but that would be performance hungry process for sure making it counter productive again.


Last edited by woox2k on 10 October 2019 at 1:19 pm UTC
gustavoyaraujo Oct 10, 2019
Well, that can works if you are not far from your friend, otherwise I doubt it will do a lag free gameplay.
libgradev Oct 10, 2019
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: TermyLets hope they roll it out for Linux, too and not leave us out like with streaming ^^

Considering it uses streaming, that might be a downside for GNU/Linux users then. I don't know - I don't use streaming via Steam at all, and so no idea what kind of shape it's in.

Currently, I almost exclusively game via streaming from an Ubuntu 18.04 host to my Samsung Q60R - it's working well!

Hardware encoding (AMD) is still missing though...
Comandante Ñoñardo Oct 10, 2019
That explain this Shadow of the Tomb Raider update.
seanbutnotheard Oct 10, 2019
Quoting: michaTowerfall Ascension Online!! <3

This was my first thought as well. But considering I didn't enjoy playing Shovel Knight via in-home streaming because there was too much latency, I'd imagine Towerfall and other fast platformers won't be very fun... at least not for the remote player(s)... :P
Liam Dawe Oct 10, 2019
Quoting: Comandante ÑoñardoThat explain this Shadow of the Tomb Raider update.
No, that's about this.
Mezron Oct 10, 2019
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My brother and I play via Parsec all of the computers we own growing up like the Street Fighter releases and VF games. He recently went all in on Linux but kept his Windows machine for Parsec only. This would be the kind of thing to bring back to Steam if I can implement for my non-steam games.
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