If you’ve ever had a game that worked only with local multiplayer and you had to either do some fast-hacking or just give up entirely on playing it with your buddy across the world, then heads-up to you, as drips of news from developers this week suggest Valve is working on making things much easier for multiplayer fans on 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,” Valve has told developers. “Using the Remote Play Together Beta, a player can simply launch any game with support for local multiplayer, local co-op or shared / split-screen features and then via the Steam Overlay, invite a Friend to join their game for some multiplayer fun. The invitation is just like handing a second controller to a friend. When the Friend accepts an invitation to play, it’s as though they’re playing side by side at the same machine. Much like a traditional split-screen experience, the host’s computer is running the game, but with Remote Play Together friends can join using their own controllers, voice, audio, and display — regardless of whether they also own the game on Steam.”
With a feature like this, it might not be necessary in the future for games like, say, Conan Chop Chop to hold back for a multiplayer rework. Definitely something for all of us to keep an eye on.
Hidden in Plain Sight fans… BIG NEWS! 🚨🚨🚨
Steam is coming out with a new feature called "Remote Play Together", allowing local-multiplayer games to be played online! Only the host needs to own the game, and can invite remote friends to play online!
— Adam Spragg (@AdamSpragg) October 9, 2019