Valve releases game streaming over local network!

One of the cool things with the Nvidia Shield console is the ability to stream games from a computer to it. I’ve always wanted something similar between computers as it would have been nice to have a less powerful laptop and still be able to play more complex games running on a “gaming server”. Well, it looks like I will get my wish as Valve has released the game streaming feature on Steam.

Basically what it does is that if you have 2 computers on your local network running steam it will allow you to run games on either computer from the other computer.  This means that even if you have a small laptop with just on-chip graphics it still will be able to run more demanding games by streaming it from the more beefy PC.

Since I am currently in Chicago for phpTek conference I cannot try this myself but feel free to try it out and tell us in the comments or in our forum how it works for you!

Right now it only works between Windows PC’s but SteamOS, Linux and OSX-streaming should follow soon.

March 21, 2014 – In-Home Streaming, a new feature of Steam, is now released to all users. Players who have multiple computers at home can immediately take advantage of the new feature. When you login to Steam on two computers on the same network, they automatically connect, allowing you to remotely install, launch, and play games as though you were sitting at the remote PC.

Steam In-Home Streaming allows you to play your PC games on a lower-end computer, such as a laptop or home theater PC, or a computer running another operating system, such as Mac OS X, SteamOS, or Linux. 

When you play a game using In-Home Streaming, video and audio are sent through your home network from your high-end gaming PC to another device in your home. From here, your keyboard, mouse, and controller input is sent back to the remote computer.

For more information, please visit http://steampowered.com /streaming.