Steam In-Home Video Game Streaming Available Now for Everyone

Valve announced today through its PC gaming platform, Steam, that you can now freely stream your PC games on Steam to another PC in your house, free and easy. Previously, this feature was limited to a closed group of beta testers, who have been providing feedback back to Valve on the feature and its potential.

The feature, called In-Home Streaming, works like this. You allow one PC (typically your high-end, gaming PC) to run the game of your choice. Typically, this restricts you to playing at a desk in front of a small monitor. With In-Home Streaming, you can now pipe that game to another television in your home, particularly your living room, through another computer (one that can be much lower-end in terms of horsepower). This allows you to play in a potentially more comfortable setting, such as on a couch in your living room, or on your bed in your bedroom.

In-Home Streaming is free and cross-platform on Windows, Mac OSX and Linux (and the Linux-based SteamOS for that matter). As of now, you can only stream from a Windows machine to one of those other OS’s, but Valve plans to open all-to-all access in the future.

The arrival of this feature paves the way for Valve’s big move forward in bringing PC gaming to the living room, particularly with its Steam Machines movement. You can learn more about Steam Machines in our feature and video preview from earlier this year. You can also view our detailed video overview of every Steam Machine currently coming to market.

Below is the full release from Valve regarding In-Home Streaming and how you can get started.

[Source: Valve]