Steam Launches New Remote Play Feature That Works Anywhere

Steam's In-Home Streaming feature was neat, but its most glaring drawback was right there in the name: it didn't work outside of your house. Now Steam has updated the feature to support streaming from just about anywhere, changing its name to something more appropriate in the process.

According to PC Gamer, Steam Remote Play is what In-Home Streaming used to be, but a lot more capable. Now, instead of having to be on the same WiFi network as your PC running Steam, you can feasibly be on any wireless network in the world. As long as your PC is running Steam and is connected to the internet, you should be able to stream your games to your laptop or smart device (though we imagine the experience won't be great if you're halfway around the globe).

In essence, Steam's upgrade to Remote Play works a lot like the feature PlayStation 4 owners have enjoyed for ages. And Microsoft appears to be jumping on the bandwagon, as well, as it'll allow Xbox One consoles to act as Project xCloud servers for free out-of-home streaming this fall. We'd be remiss to mention all of the above and not at least tip a hat to Sony for being ahead of the game. They've been trailblazers in terms of streaming; everyone else is just catching up at this point.

But back to Steam. The update to Remote Play isn't the only major change coming to Valve's launcher in the near term. An enormous overhaul of Steam's library is in the works, promising to clean up the aesthetic a little bit and make things easier to find. We're fans in particular of the box art that'll be more visible following the change, because come on; it's much nicer to look at box art than a boring text-only list of games. Steam's library update is set to enter beta sometime this summer, giving those deemed worthy a chance to play with the new design before it goes live for everyone sometime in the future.

In the meantime, though, you can download the latest Steam update today and enable Remote Play for outside-the-home gaming. Should we hear more about any other changes coming to Steam, we'll let you know.