It requires a PC or Mac with Steam installed. With the Steam Link, PC and Mac games can be streamed over a home network connection either wirelessly with 5GHz WiFi or through a wired connection.

It also works with Android mobile devices. It works with Android TVs such as those from Sony, Philips, and other brands as well as Android TV powered media players. Steam Link on AndroidThe Steam Link app was announced last week and is now available in beta for free on the Google Play Store. The app lets you play full PC games on your TV screen via home network streaming. The news comes almost a year after Apple revoked its approval for the Steam Link app to run on Apple hardware, citing what Valve said were 'business conflicts with app guidelines that had allegedly not been realized by the original review team.' Apple and Valve have not responded to a request for comment on what exactly changed in the intervening time period.Valve has released the Steam Link app in beta for Android TV. Valve's mobile Steam Link app, which lets users stream PC games to other screens inside and outside the home, is now available on Apple's iOS and tvOS App Stores. But Apple has cracked down on direct links to outside store purchases within its apps.

That decision led many app makers to direct users to make purchases and subscriptions outside their iOS apps. On Android, by contrast, a generalized remote desktop connection offers the usual access to Steam's Community, Chat, and, crucially, the Store interface (see examples in the gallery below).Īpple has long required that apps selling digital content give Apple a 30 percent cut for anything sold directly through the app.

When streaming to an iOS device, Steam launches in a specialized version of Big Picture mode where a user's Game Library is the only available selection. [Update (12:07 pm): Ars testing has discovered an important difference between the new iOS Steam Link app and the Android version that has been available for over a year.

Steam link android