One feature makes Steam Link better than console game streaming

I’ve never gotten a great game streaming solution that’s worked for me, but now that I’ve started using Steam Link with my OnePlus Open and Vision Pro, I can’t believe I didn’t start using it earlier.

I’ve tested Valve’s streaming tech in the past, but I’ve never had amazing results. The most I played on it was Loop Hero, a slower-paced strategy rogue-like game that came out a few years ago.

However, my friend and I randomly tried it in a pinch last weekend and were extremely impressed. Over the following week, I’ve been using it across more and more devices, and it’s opened up a world of semi-portable gaming for me.

For my tests, I should mention that I’m stuck with 30 Mbps DSL, but I’m still using Wi-Fi 6 modems, which has led to Steam Link streaming over my local home network quite well.

What I like about Steam Link

It can feel like playing on an IMAX theatre screen in here.

What’s truly won me over with Steam Link is the ability to adjust the aspect ratio of my games. Since Steam Link runs PC games, which are developed to fit various monitors, it makes it easy to get a good experience on all the random devices I stream to. This doesn’t apply to all titles, but a lot of them will have the option.

If I want to play a game on my iPhone, it’s super easy, and a standard 16:9 presentation looks great. But maybe I want to play on the larger interior screen of the OnePlus Open? Boom, I can square up my games to be closer to the size of that screen. Same goes for an iPad or the Vision Pro. It’s not perfect, and I can only cover around 90 per cent of the Open’s screen, but it’s significantly better than streaming a game in only 16:9 from my Xbox.

I especially like it on a foldable phone with a Backbone controller. It’s like a slightly smaller, slightly jankier PlayStation Portal, but it packs up better. Playing in the Vision Pro is also great since the headset has an outstanding OLED display. However, when you enlarge the screen too much, it reveals some imperfections with the stream quality since it’s not playing natively. On a typical TV or phone, it’s a lot less noticeable. That said, the distractions mostly fade away once you settle into your game.

After the initial setup, you can also connect to your PC from anywhere. However, for this to work, you need a fast internet connection at both your PC and your Steam Link device. You also need to make sure your PC is on or in sleep mode. People online also recommend a 5GHz connection if possible. You can also dive into your streaming settings and really tweak your specific gameplay experience.

These are some of the settings you can adjust when streaming.

You can load non-Steam games into the game launcher and play them through Steam Link, but this is a little hit and miss. For instance, streaming Alan Wake 2 from Epic Games was fine, but getting GTA V from the same launcher was much harder since the Rockstar Games launcher didn’t want to play nice with Steam. Read Dead Redemption 2, which I own on Steam, and also needs to go through the Rockstar Games launcher, runs great.

Others online seem to have made GTA V from Epic Games work with some tinkering, but most recommended switching to the free open-source game streaming tech Moonlight, which lets you play all the games on your PC regardless of the launcher. I haven’t tried it yet, but I saw during my research that it will let you stream games to a Wii U, so I’ll be testing and writing about that soon enough.

Overall, Steam Link is a surprisingly robust system that is so easy to use that it vastly outweighs the need to have a second console or gaming PC in my living room. I’m shocked people don’t talk about it more, but my guess is that most people just use their ISP’s supplied modem and those have only gotten good enough to support something like this over Wi-Fi since Wi-Fi 6 came out.