The Valve Steam Link app has finally been introduced on Apple products, a year after it was initially banned by Apple under grounds of "business conflicts with app guidelines". Steam Link is Valve’s take on the upcoming field of game streaming, wherein users can stream games to any compatible screen from a terminal running the Steam service with games installed on it.
To use Steam Link, users are required to own a PC running Windows 7 or later, an active Steam account with the Steam app installed on the PC, and an active internet connection with at least a 5GHz Wi-Fi setup. In terms of connectivity, Valve recommends using a wired Ethernet setup, for which you would require something like the recently announced Lightning-Ethernet adapter for iPhones and iPads.
Streaming a game allows you to play it anywhere, as long as your mobile device is connected to the same network as your PC. If the prospect of playing games such as Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey and Bioshock Infinite seem impossible on a touchscreen, Steam Link on iOS and tvOS will also be compatible with the Steam Controller, as well as third party ‘Made for iPhone’ controllers. Anyone eager to get a controller for Steam Link in India should mostly get hold of a third party controller such as the Redgear Pro or the evergreen Logitech F310, seeing that the Steam Controller is not available in India officially, and third party importers have priced it at around Rs 10,000 on Amazon at the time of publishing.
With Steam Link, if your roomie has taken over your PC to play FIFA, you can still stream from your PC on to your Apple TV or your iPad to play the seemingly endless missions of Arkham Knight. In future, the computing hub will possibly shift from your own PC to remotely hosted servers, which you would probably be able to subscribe to, and play games depending on your subscription pack.
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