There are times when we have free time and we cannot play our favorite PC games and of course we cannot carry it around our house all the time and despite the fact that one of the premises of the console Valve is allowing us to play our favorite games from it, there is an alternative if we want to play our games from anywhere in the house using our cell phones, tablets and even our smart TVs as terminals.
That’s why home streaming solutions using the home’s wireless LAN network are essential. These work similarly to cloud gaming where our PC acts as a server and the device from which we play as a smart terminal. So it allows us to play with a low performance laptop, a PostPC device such as a mobile or tablet and even the SmartTV in our living room. One of the applications that allows us to do this is Valve’s Steam Link, which will allow us to remotely run the games on our PC on any of the devices that we have connected to the same WiFi network. So let’s see how to configure it.
Obviously, to do this we must have Steam installed on our PC with some games, a good wireless connection and a device from which we will play quietly from anywhere in the house. In this way we will not have to move our PC from one place and we will be able to continue our games without being in front of our computer.
How do I enable Remote Play on Steam?
First of all, open the Steam application on your computer from which you will have to make sure that it is up to date. Once inside in the upper left part and select the parameters of the Steam, which is at the top left. Once there, head to remote game where from there you can pair the different devices. This window is important because it is where we will do all the matchmaking for remote play on Steam.
The next step is to download the Steam Link app on your device, you can find it for Android and iOS, but it is not available for other operating systems. So if your SmartTV does not use one of these two systems, you must use devices such as an Apple TV or a Chromecast with Android.
Pairing devices
Once you have it installed you just have to go to the app settings on your device and if you have it on the same local network and with the Steam app open you will be able to see it, it will have found your PC.
Simply, you will have to select it for it to appear a four digit brooch, which will immediately prompt you for the Steam desktop app through a window. As soon as you do, the Steam Link app will start performing network tests to measure our WiFi performance. Don’t worry, they are very fast
From there, you can now play Steam games via Remote Play from anywhere in your home, however, you should keep in mind that the experience with Steam Remote Play may not be entirely satisfactory.
What can limit Steam Remote Play?
There are several of them and these can greatly detract from the remote gaming experience with Steam. That’s why it’s important to take them into account when looking for a smooth experience. Let’s not forget that this is a game in the cloud and even if it is local, it has the same limits as the one that broadcasts on the Internet, but fortunately on a much smaller scale.
Too many devices on WiFi network
Today, even light bulbs have a wireless connection to be controlled remotely. The fact that there are a large number of devices causes the demands on the router’s integrated network controller to increase and increase. These requests cannot be answered in parallel and as the fleet of devices increases more and more, the latency increases, which is the enemy of any online gaming experience, even at the local network level like this. is the case. In addition, the different devices establish sporadic connections to the network even when we are not using them, which will negatively affect the performance of the remote game in Steam.
So if you want to get the most out of the experience, our advice is to leave the WiFi of all the devices you’re not going to use inactive or simply turn them off. In any case, there is one thing that we recommend using Remote Play and that at least the computer that plays games for Steam is
A bad video codec on the terminal
Remote gaming, whatever its nature, what it does is transmit a continuous video back to the device from which we are playing and therefore this must be transmitted and decoded. Unfortunately, there are many mobile devices that not only have a lousy network driver, but their video decoding hardware is poor in performance and ends up creating huge latency. This happens especially in some Chinese consoles which are nothing more than mobile phones with classic console commands and 1001 emulators and ROMS of dubious legality, where their processors are very low end and are designed to play little more than internet video and with extremely low bit rates.
Valve usually tests the various devices that come out on the market with its Remote Play via Steam Link, however we can find cases like the one who writes the article, where his Samsung mobile is not recognized. This is important because Valve has remote play profiles suitable for the most popular devices on the market.
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