Valve’s Next Trick Will Let Steam’s Local Multiplayer Games Work Online

There are plenty of games that come with local multiplayer options. This means that players in the same room can all play the game and will not require them to have an internet connection. However, the problem with such games is that it requires all players to be present in the same place at the same time.

Valve thinks that they might have the answer to that in the form of game streaming. Dubbed Remote Play Together, this basically takes a game’s local multiplayer mode and puts it online, where players can all play together without having to be in the same place. As we said, this comes in the form of game streaming where the host will stream a copy of the game to the cloud, where up to three other friends will be able to join in.

These friends won’t even need a copy of the game in order to play, although how effective this will be remains to be seen. As ArsTechnica points out, the problem with game streaming is that it needs to be fast since having input that takes 1-2 seconds to register is obviously less than ideal.

Companies like Microsoft, Sony, and Google all have dedicated server farms that probably have extremely fast and stable connections, but the same can’t be said for regular people. That being said, Remote Play Together is going to launch as a beta on the week of October 21, so we won’t have to wait too long to find out how well it is going to work.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Gaming
Tags: Steam (Valve), Valve