How to do remote play on steam

Provided the Steam Deck isn’t your one and only games PC, you can make it an even more flexible handheld by using Steam Remote Play. Once you learn how to set it up – with the aid of this guide, I’d hope – you can have Remote Play stream any game from your Steam library straight to your Steam Deck. Yes, you’ll need a fast internet connection for the highest picture quality and lowest amount of input lag, but Remote Play can both sidestep Steam Deck compatibility issues and run your games with potentially much higher performance than what the Deck’s own hardware can manage.

On top of that, streaming from a PC will help you save on the Deck’s storage space – useful if you’ve yet to pick up one of the best microSD cards for the Steam Deck – and you can even use Remote Play to wrangle the Steam Deck into acting as a controller for your desktop. It’s all worth learning, just as it’s worth knowing how to stream your PC Game Pass games to the Steam Deck.

First up, streaming. The Steam Deck doesn’t have to be played while out and about: grabbing it before slumping onto the sofa or vegetating in bed can make a nice break from sitting upright at your PC’s desk for hours. But since the two devices are staying close, why not harness your main rig’s power together with Remote Play? Depending on your hardware this could easily produce a better combination of high settings and high frame rates than the Deck can by itself, and since the games are technically running on Windows, you don’t have to worry about any compatibility problems owed to the Deck’s Linux-based OS.

Step 1: Make sure your PC and your Steam Deck are both connected to the internet and logged into the same Steam account, with the games you want to play remotely already installed on the main PC.

Assuming your Steam Deck will use Wi-Fi, for best results connect your PC via Ethernet.

Step 2: Before jumping straight into a game, there are a few settings you can optimise. On your host device – your main PC, in other words – open up Steam’s settings, open the Remote Play tab and click “Advanced Host Options”. Most of the default settings are fine, but I’d recommend checking “Change desktop resolution to match streaming client” so your PC isn’t wasting power by running games at a resolution above the Deck display’s 1280x800. Checking “Prioritize network traffic” can also help with stream quality on slower (or busy) internet connections. With those settings in place, hit “OK”.

For streaming, there's no point having your PC rendering at your monitor's 1080p/1440p/4K resolution when you're going to be viewing everything on an 800p Steam Deck - so check the second box.

You can also make settings changes on the Steam Deck itself. In its own Steam settings menu, scroll down to the Remote Play section, then scroll down and enable Advanced Client Options. Pick one of the three stream quality options, with “Fast” having the best performance but the lowest quality, and “Beautiful” looking sharper but needing a much quicker connection to run smoothly. The middle option, “Balanced”, should be selected by default.

Step 3: With the housekeeping done, it’s time to play. On your Steam Deck, navigate to the game that you want to play in your library. See the little downwards-pointing arrow next to the Install button? Select it to bring up a list of available devices, which should include both the Deck and your PC.

The very first time you try this, SteamOS will highlight this button for you. Jolly nice of it.

Step 4: Select your PC from the list and you’ll instantly return to the game’s library page. The Install button will now say “Stream” instead, so select it, the select “OK” on the following screen.

You can check your PC's name in the "About" section of its Windows settings.

Step 5: Your PC will enter Steam’s Big Picture Mode and launch the game, which will simultaneously stream to your Steam Deck. Congrats – you are now using Remote Play, so sit back and play. Remotely.

Job done. To exit Remote Play or customise controls, press the Steam button on the Deck.

How to use the Steam Deck as a PC controller using Remote Play

Another neat thing about Remote Play is that it can turn the Steam Deck intro a controller for your main PC; handy for games that don’t sit so well with a mouse and keyboard. Yes, it’s bigger and heavier than the usual Xbox and PlayStation controllers, and the battery life won’t be as good, but they don’t have the Steam Deck’s haptic trackpads. Also, who knows, some folk may have spent their entire peripherals budget on… well, a Steam Deck, quite possibly.

In any case, setting up the Steam Deck as a controller only takes a few settings tweaks, focused around getting your games to use your desktop audio and monitor again.

Step 1: On your PC, go back into the Remote Play settings’ Advanced Host Options on your PC. Check “Play audio on host” and uncheck “Change desktop resolution to match streaming client”, then click “OK”.

Here's how the host settings should appear if you want to use the Steam Deck as a controller.

Step 2: Back on the Steam Deck, mute the speaker volume and start streaming a game as if you were going to play it remotely. You can then ignore the Deck’s screen while using its controls to play on your main monitor, with your PC’s own speakers or headset. It’s something of a bodge compared to, say, connecting a PS5 DualSense controller, but it works.

Steam Remote Play

Extend your Steam gaming experience to your phone, tablet or TV using the Steam Remote Play feature with the Steam Link app. Steam Remote Play is also used to play your own game remotely when logged into Steam on another computer, and when inviting friends to play using Remote Play Together.

Each computer or device connected via Remote Play has its own session. You can find out more about connected devices using the ISteamRemotePlay Interface

If you have optimized your game for remote play on various types of devices, or your game works well with Remote Play Together, you can check the appropriate feature checkboxes in the Basic Info section of the Store Page admin on the partner site, and your game will show up when customers search for games that work well for those use cases.

Checking this feature allows users to invite their Steam Friends to join the game as though they were sitting at the same computer playing together. Only the host needs to own and install the game, while additional players connect through Steam Remote Play streaming technology.This feature is enabled automatically for games that are listed with Local Multiplayer, Local Co-op, or Shared/Split Screen capability, but you can enable or disable it yourself to match whether this feature is appropriate for your game.

Users can invite friends from their friends list in the Steam overlay, and if you want, you can create UI to invite friends directly from your game using the ISteamRemotePlay::BSendRemotePlayTogetherInvite() function.

It's possible to use Remote Play Together and set up your game to allow the public to test it with developers without ever getting the files downloaded to their computers. This could be used for focus testing of new content, press walkthroughs, virtual trade shows, etc.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpeDNV1qUBk&feature=youtu.be

1. Make sure the default branch has content that you're comfortable with the public downloading and seeing. For an unreleased game, this should probably be an empty depot.
   
2. Create or set a password protected branch with content that you'd like to invite people to test remotely.
   
3. Go to the partner site, edit your game's Steamworks settings, select the Application tab, and choose Steam Remote Play. Select the branch that you want to use for testing, then save and publish your changes.

4. If your game is unreleased, send a CD-key to the users you would like to invite for testing. This grants them access to the default depot, so you may want to create special purpose accounts for this.
   
5. Set up your test system to use the password protected branch. Launch the game on the test system and right click people in your friends list to invite them to join the session and play! Each session requires a fresh invitation from the developer.

This walkthrough assumes that you are showcasing content, but you can also use this to enable Remote Play Together on a branch and try it out privately before enabling it on your game in the Store Page settings.

(NOTE: this feature requires that the test system be running a Steam client dated May 23, 2020 or newer)

If you have checked this feature, it means you have created a recommended Steam Input touch controller config for your game, and have verified that the UI elements and font sizes work well for small handheld devices.
If you have checked this feature, it means you have created a recommended Steam Input touch controller config for your game, and you adapt to the various 4x3 and 16x9 aspect ratios used by tablet devices.

You can use the ISteamRemotePlay::BGetSessionClientResolution() function to get information about the remote device aspect ratio and resolution.

If you have checked this feature, that means you have full controller support for your game, and have verified that the UI elements and font sizes work well for viewing at a distance on a TV.
Take a look at the Optimizing For Remote Play blog post for some examples and best practices.

1. Begin streaming the game to your mobile device. On the desktop machine, go to Steam Big Picture Controller Configuration for your game. Remove any unnecessary bindings not used by your game, and add any custom bindings used by your game. For more information see //partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/steam_controller/getting_started_for_players

2. On your mobile device, click the [...] button and drag any newly bound controls onto the screen. Adjust the layout and size of each button as desired. For more information see the introduction support article and the more detailed visual guide.
   
3. Once you are happy with your configuration and are ready to publish it, go to Big Picture Controller Configuration on the desktop (while streaming to your mobile device), and click Export Config. Save it as a new Personal binding and give it an appropriate name such as 'Official Touch Controller Configuration for GAME' and a useful description.
   
4. Go to Browse Configs, select your new config, and click Share Configuration.
   
5. Go to the partner site and edit Steamworks Settings → Application → Steam Input. Under Steam Input Default Touch Configuration select Custom Configuration. Click the "Add Custom Configuration" button and paste the URL for your new config, and click Save.

6. Publish your updated Steamworks settings for your game, as you would normally.

If you want to change your official configuration, you have to publish a new config, as you would with the Steam Controller.If your game has multiple game modes, you can set up an actionset with unique layout for each game mode.Simply add an actionset to the touch controller configuration for your game, cycle through the actionsets on your mobile device and setup the layout for them, and then call the SteamInput APIs to change to the appropriate actionset at runtime.For example, if you wanted to add a menu actionset, you could do it like this:

#include "steam/isteaminput.h" void GameInit() { SteamInput()->Init(); } void GameQuit() { SteamInput()->Shutdown(); } void GameLoop() { GameInit(); while ( bRunning ) { const InputActionSetHandle_t k_ActionSetGame = 1; const InputActionSetHandle_t k_ActionSetMenu = 2; SteamInput()->ActivateActionSet( STEAM_INPUT_HANDLE_ALL_CONTROLLERS, BInMenu() ? k_ActionSetMenu : k_ActionSetGame ); ... } GameQuit(); }