Some PC games include a local multiplayer option for groups of people who want to play together in the same location. But Steam is unlocking the ability to play such games without needing everyone to be in the same place.

As PC Gamer reports, Valve is launching a new feature for Steam games called Remote Play Together. What Remote Play Together does is add online support for local multiplayer games, meaning you can play with friends even if you can't all meet up in the same location and sit in front of the same TV.

Today our team announced another great new platform feature that will be built into Steam: Remote Play Together. This will allow friends to play local co-op games together over the internet as though they were in the same room together. https://t.co/jEZyGoXEfc — Alden Kroll ?? GCAP / PAX Australia (@aldenkroll) October 10, 2019

The new feature was announced on the developer-only Steamworks website, but later confirmed in the tweet you see above by Alden Kroll, who works on Steam at Valve.

The good news for developers is, Remote Play Together support will automatically get added to "all local multiplayer, local co-op and split-screen games" when the beta for the feature launches beginning the week of Oct. 21. As Steam is simulating local network multiplayer over the internet, it should "just work" without games needing to be patched. We'll see how well that works when the feature launches.

Steam currently lists 927 games under the "Local Multiplayer" tag, 373 of those class as 4-player local, 327 are local co-op, and 257 as just co-op. Clearly there's a lot of games that could benefit from Remote Play Toegther.

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