Steam is working on ‘local multiplayer over the internet’ feature with no account requirement

Remote Play Together no longer requires invited users to have a Steam account in Steam’s beta client. Users can now invite one non-Steam account in multiplayer games. Remote Play Together lets users play local multiplayer games online.

Users who want to play together with players without a Steam account via the internet, use an invitation link, Valve writes. Players can find this link after launching a compatible game in the friends list in the Steam Overlay. Gamers can send this link to a friend who can play the game on Windows, iOS, Android or a Raspberry Pi.

The recipient of the link must install Steam Link or Steam to facilitate the connection with the first player. Users can now invite only one non-Steam account. In addition, users can still invite multiple Steam friends. Whether Valve wants to extend this limitation of one non-Steam account is unknown. It’s also not clear when the feature will come to the stable Steam version.

Remote Play Together allows players to play local split-screen or shared-screen games as if they were in the same room. To do this, Steam streams the image of the inviting user to the other users. Input from, for example, a controller or keyboard is sent back to that first user. The invited users only see the user’s game and thus cannot navigate to the desktop, for example.

Valve made Remote Play Together available to all users in late 2019. The developer recommends an internet connection with a minimum download speed of 10Mbit/s to 30Mbit/s. Users who are invited do not need to have purchased or installed the game. Remote Play Together works with thousands of games including Stardew Valley, Sid Meier’s Civilization VI and Call of Duty: Black Ops III.