Valve long ago stopped selling the Steam Link device, as it so substantially improved the native app of the same name that the hardware was almost unnecessary for it. Today we are going to tell you how you can use your smartphone or tablet to play games from your Steam library simply by having an Internet connection and, of course, a PC with Steam and games in your digital library on the platform.
In the past Valve sold the Steam Link, a device used to play games from your Steam library on PC by broadcasting to a television. However, it seems that the device was not very successful, so Valve focused its efforts on developing the application of the same name for mobile phones and tablets, which must be recognized that it works quite well and makes it unnecessary to use dedicated hardware as necessary. yesteryear.
What do you need to play your PC games on Steam on mobile?
As we said before, you no longer need dedicated hardware for it, but it is still necessary to have a PC with Steam , since after all this application what it does is literally connect remotely to the PC to run the games.
In fact, you will be able to check when you have it configured that everything you do on the mobile phone is visible on the PC screen, so the hardware load and thus the performance falls on the PC , regardless of the smartphone or tablet you use to connect. Likewise, if for example you had music playing on your PC and you run the application to connect, the music will begin to be heard on the mobile terminal.
So this is what you need:
- A PC (if possible, gaming) with Steam.
- A smartphone or tablet (Android or iOS).
- Connection to a home network, both on the PC and on the mobile terminal (this is for the initial configuration, later and once linked you can also play on the Internet, while away from home).
Logically, you must download the Steam Link application for Android or iOS, depending on the operating system that your terminal uses.
Link your smartphone to the PC using Steam Link
The first thing you should do is have your PC on and with Steam open. You must go to the Steam menu -> Preferences and in the “Remote Play” tab you must have the “Activate Remote Play” box activated.
Once you have done that, open the application on your smartphone or tablet, and the first thing it will ask you is to scan the network for computers that are running Steam. It is essential that you do this first configuration with the mobile terminal connected by WiFi to the same network as the PC or it will not work.
Once it finds your PC with Steam, it will ask you to run a network speed test.
If everything has been satisfactory, you will see a screen like the one you can see below, telling you that everything is correct and that you can now connect. You may get a short wizard to finish pairing the PC and the smartphone or tablet, depending on your security settings on Steam.
Click on the “Start playing” button and the connection will begin. On the PC you will see that Steam opens in “Big Picture” mode, and you will see exactly the same as on the screen of the mobile terminal.
As you can see, on the same screen both a D-Pad crosshead on the left and buttons equivalent to the Xbox controller on the right are “drawn”, and they are how you will suppose the necessary controls both to move around the menus and to to play. Likewise, in the upper left corner you have a button to change the control method (and that behaves like the touchpad of a laptop), in the center the Steam menu, and to the right so that the keyboard appears in case you have to type something.
By the way, as we have indicated before, once you have already linked the PC with the smartphone with Steam Link, you can use it even if you are not connected to the WiFi network, even with the mobile connection of the terminal it works without problems.