As the battle for PC gaming's soul rages on, Steam has made a surprise proclamation that players will soon be able to play games that would otherwise be destined for local co-op only, online. The "Remote Play Together" update will be natively supported by all "relevant" games on the Steam platform, and allow players from all over the world to experience the joys(?) of sharing a screen.
As per the announcement, Valve states that "all local multiplayer, local co-op and split-screen games will be automatically included in the Remote Play Together beta, which we plan to launch the week of October 21."
Sure, enterprising players have been getting around the whole "local co-op" thing for quite some time now, but having an official feature within Steam itself will open up the gate for everyone else. After all, it's rarely an easy sell to get your friend with middling-enthusiasm-at-best to download a mostly-legitimate program, extract it in the correct folder, go into their router settings and open up the correct ports, then disable all traces of any computer-protecting firewalls just so you can play some Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory.
