After launching as a beta to a limited number of testers in January, Valve has now officially launched its in-home streaming feature in Steam to all of its tens of millions of users. This will allow them to play their Steam library of games on multiple PCs on one home network.
Valve's announcement also includes a support page with some important details. One is that the host PC must be running Windows Vista, 7 or 8; XP is not supported for hosting, and neither are Linux or OS X. Another is that graphically demanding games must be streamed from a high-end computer with beefy hardware, if they're being streamed to a lower-end device like a cheap laptop or a home theater PC. One nice feature is that if you pause playing a Steam game on a PC, users can pick up where they left off on another computer in the same home network thanks to the new streaming feature.
The home network streaming feature is one of the keys to Valve's plans for its Steam Machines launch later in 2014. Over a dozen OEM partners are making their own systems that run on SteamOS but are also designed to connect to a Windows PC to stream Steam games.
Source: Valve | Image via Valve
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