Valve open up in-home streaming beta to non-Steam games

Valve are so good at hiding revelatory new features in patch notes, that I worry they might have released Half-Life 3 years ago, and we just never realised.

Valve are so good at hiding revelatory new features in patch notes, that I worry they might have released Half-Life 3 years ago, and we just never realised. In this latest instance, they've updated the Steam client beta'sin-home streaming functionality to support "streaming non-Steam games in the Steam library". That means, whether they're part of Steam or not, you'll be able to beam your most powerful games between local area network PCs. Even Minesweeper.

In-home streaming was first introduced as an invite-only beta last week. As of this update, those in the trial will be able to use Steam's native "Add a Non-Steam Game" option to give any other game Steam streaming functionality. In fact, this could technically be used to play any game on any platform, with Steam bridging the gap from Windows to Linux or Mac computers.

All of which relies on the in-home streaming functionality being stable and reliable. We've not had a chance to test it ourselves yet, but videos that have surfacedsuggest that yes, it is still very much a beta.

Thanks, ValveTime.