Although it has several competitors today Steam is the absolute leading digital game store on the market. There are several reasons, such as the fact that it is the oldest in the industry, its huge catalog, compatibility with multiple platforms (including Linux, which plays an important role for Valve), and the constant addition of features. For a few of them, it is more than understandable that in the end the preference of the vast majority of users chooses it over its alternatives.

Personally, I have already commented on it on some other occasion, if we talk about digital stores, Steam shares the first positions with GOG, due to CD Projekt RED’s dedication to the classics and for doing without the always annoying DRM, and Itch.io , the cradle of indie of games where we occasionally find absolute gems and which essentially served as the debut platform for some titles that went on to become very, very successful, such as Among Us.

As I said, Valve is trying to keep Steam up to date exploring new features and improving existing ones constantly, whether to improve the gaming experience, the shopping experience, or the more social aspect of the platform, where we can add our friends as contacts to negotiate transactions for the purchase and sale of digital assets, whether it is a specific game or games created and managed by the platform itself .

Today we find another novelty, very interesting for users who share a local network with other players, because, as we can read in the new support publication, Steam now allows you to stream games directly over your local network. This means that if you want to install the game on your device (either PC or Steam Deck) and there is another system on the local network that already has it, instead of having to download all its files from servers on the Internet, they will be transferred from the other system directly from a computer that already has them.

This will of course have consequences huge improvement in download speed, especially if we are talking about big games (like any triple-A), because with few exceptions the data transfer speed of the local network is always much higher than even the broadband connection offers. In this way, downloads that can take one or even several hours in traditional mode (especially with a slow connection or if the Steam servers are overloaded at that time) can be shortened to a few minutes.

Above, with a red border, an example of what will appear in the Steam client of the device serving the content; with a yellow box, which will be seen by the user receiving the download.

This feature is currently available to beta users of the Steam client., both for computers and for Steam Deck, and of course each user will be able to choose whether they want to use it (and if so with what restrictions) or whether they want to continue exclusively with the traditional method, i.e. downloading from the Internet. These are, as we can read on the support page, the four available settings:

• TO deactivate With this option, the client does not search for available devices or allow local transfers of game files. Files are not downloaded or transferred to other computers connected to the local network.
• TO they only allow transfers between their own devicesit is possible to transfer content between devices on your LAN (by default) where you are logged in under the same Steam account.
• TO only allow transfers with steam friendstransfers are possible between devices connected to your LAN where your Steam friends are logged in.
• TO allow transfers with any usertransfers are possible between any device that is connected to your LAN and running Steam.

On the other hand, you are more than likely asking at what point is privacy when using this new feature. At this point, it’s important to clarify that only general game files will be transferred, not files related to user profiles, save games, etc. Anyway, this is what Valve tells us about it:

• Only files that are part of the original game are transferred. Local save games and configuration files are not sent. Files from Steam Workshop, Steam Cloud and Steam shaders are also excluded.
• If you configure your Steam client to allow transfer to friends or any user, other users on your local network can see what games you have installed.
• The transmitted content is compressed but not encrypted because all data sent is assumed to be in the public domain.
  All data received from another Steam client is validated and must match the expected content. Any corrupted or invalid data is ignored and not installed.

So it seems that Valve has taken into account the privacy preferences of each type of user, so that only those who wish to use this new and more than interesting feature of Steam.