The Steam client now allows users to purchase and install games from anywhere.
Good news for anyone who’s ever wondered why they couldn’t install new Steam games on their home PC from remote: now you can! The latest update to the Steam client enables remote downloads from any web browser, even on mobile devices, as long as the Steam software is running on your home system.
Making it go is simple. Update to the new Steam beta client, then go somewhere else and log into your Steam account at steampowered.com. [You can do it from home, too, but you might as well make the most of it. Go out and grab a coffee. Sit and relax for awhile. Enjoy the fresh spring air.] Go to “Community,” click on “Games” and boom, you’re now looking at a list of all your games and their “installation state” on your rig.
And now for the exciting part! Got a new game in the list that isn’t yet installed? Find it and hit “install” and then stand back, because a remote download is about to go off!
I suppose this could make browsing Steam sales at work a little more compelling but the real benefit is the ability to start a game download from pretty much anywhere and have it waiting for you, ready to play, when you get home. For people who buy a lot of Steam games and spend a lot of time waiting for them to download, that’s pretty cool.
The Steam client update is a beta version, but we all know that Valve doesn’t make test versions available to the public until they’re pretty much 100 percent ready to go anyway. It’s a safe bet that everything’s going to work fine, in other words, so if you want to give it a shot, get the details [although there’s really not much more to know] at the Steam forums.
