With Google Stadia set to launch a little later on this month, game streaming is about to pick up some serious business. From the sound of things, Valve might just jump into the fray with its own service.
New information has popped up on the Steam Database/Steam Tracking front, courtesy of GitHub. According to the site, the Steam Games partner portal page apparently has a line of code that wasn’t there before. It reads: “function SignLatestCloudGamingAddendum(returnURL).”
Could cloud gaming come to Steam?
While this is hardly anything official, it suggests that the company is working on its own Cloud Gaming Addendum. With this, users could potentially stream a number of games through the service, instead of having to download them and then launch them.
That would put Steam in the same league as Google with its Stadia service, as well as with Sony’s PlayStation Now, which also enables PC gameplay through the cloud. Microsoft also has a cloud gaming service that is testing very well at the moment during its beta.
Valve hasn’t said a word about such a service. But considering that it’s trying to stay competitive against the likes of Epic Games Store, it wouldn’t hurt to introduce something like this at some point. Obviously, it would go through some kind of beta first, then eventually roll out for public use. As for available games, well, there are literally thousands to choose from. So the company could easily rotate new titles around with ease, and keep a few classics around.
We’ll just have to wait and see what the company may have in mind. Whatever’s going on, we likely won’t hear anything until Valve sees how the Stadia will perform upon its release on November 19. Here’s hoping it’s convenient, varied with its content, and, most importantly, affordable for all budgets.
