Steam integrates cloud gaming via Geforce Now in beta

Valve is giving game developers an opportunity to take advantage of upcoming Nvidia GeForce Now integration. That would mean that in the future, players will be able to launch games from the Steam client, which will then stream from GFN servers instead of their own PC.

The documentation that Valve has released to developers also speaks of the fact that the hosting of the games and streams can be done not only by Nvidia, but also by Valve itself. At the moment, however, there is only actual support for GeForce Now in this beta. As far as we know, the beta is not public; in any case, the beta program that users can subscribe to within the client does not lead to the appearance of the option. It is not known when the public will be able to make use of this.

Steam already has the ability to stream games to gamers’ devices, but the user’s own gaming PC serves as the server. That’s what Valve calls Remote Play.

GeForce Now is a game streaming service like Google Stadia, PlayStation Now and the upcoming Project xCloud. If a game is supported by the service, the developer has indicated an opt-in and the user owns the game in question on a supported platform, he or she can play the game streaming.

Initially, GeForce Now supported a wide range of games, but that was curtailed when game publishers decided to remove their games from the service. GeForce Now came out of beta in February and soon after, the likes of Blizzard, Bethesda, 2K and Microsoft pulled their games from the service.