Multiplayer Via Streaming

[MaTTerCuBe]

So, something that PC games lack in general is multiplayer in the traditional, split screen sense. I know that split screen is horrible compared to playing online with your friends, but your friends don't always have the same game, and conving them to buy the game would help if you could actually play it together (not just let them "borrow" it through family share". Having the option to play locally seems essential if we want PC gaming to spread to the living room (steam machines and such). And I don't mean LAN. Currently, if I want to play multiplayer with a friend on a PC (especially through Steam) my friend MUST also have a copy of that game. How great would it be to play multiplayer with your guest on one machine, one game, but multiple screens?

Split screen can be pretty awfull, but imagine how fun it would be to play the same "local"-like games but on different screens/monitors via streaming? I'm not really all that tech savy, but if consoles could do split screens on one machine, couldn't we do "dual screens" with streaming on one machine?

[grumpycrab]

The in-home-streaming option doesn't help local (LAN) multiplayer at all. The (video) streaming is to a single client, with control input going the other way and so I cannot think how multiple clients would be supported. So you're back to what Steam provides in the way of LAN-based gaming. Whether SteamOS can add to that I don't know.

[fork]

That would be awesome! But that's not how streaming works. No multitasking allowed, since input is being read from both the host and client computers. I'd love for something like this to be implemented though - good couch multiplayer needs to be resurrected!

[TIBILA]

Never tried this, but I imagine that if the host computer is a powerful one, it can hold multiple virtual machines running in parallel, one machine for each player... In each VM, one player would log to steam and would then remote play from another device in the house... Maybe some issue with multiple mouses arise, but I'm sure VMware or Virtualbox can be tinkered with to deal with that issue... Can someone try and confirm if this is possible?

[[masni] CYKA CLEANER]

yeah it works with vm but u must have gpu for each vm...

[Din]

Just use family sharing and play the same games your friend has

[Rob Schwab Random]

This would be an awesome feature if they decide to implement a method; maybe they will be able to do cluster processing as well, just a thought.