Valve sent out an e-mail to developers recently indicating that they can soon make use of a new feature called Remote Play Together. It will automatically enable all local multiplayer games to be played online, this includes shared-screen and split-screen games that typically don’t have online multiplayer options, such as Bud Spencer & Terrence Hill’s Slaps And Beans or the grotesquely popular Mother Russia Bleeds.

DSO Gaming spotted the news from an e-mail shared by Adam Spragg, the developer of Hidden In Plain Sight, a local multiplayer game where players attempt to eliminate other players while hiding in plain sight among NPCs.

You can check out the e-mail below, which reveals that the Remote Play Together feature will head into beta on October 21st.

This seems like it could definitely breathe life into a lot of abandoned multiplayer games that only allow for offline play, such as Super Indie Karts, which is a true hidden gem on Steam.

As mentioned in the letter from Valve, this will retroactively make a lot of local multiplayer games playable online.

This means you’ll be able to play games like Sonic Mania, Broforce, Salt & Sanctuary, Stranger Things, Tower 57 and Guns, Gore and Cannoli with your buddies online.

That’s really going to open up a ton of games to all new kinds of interactivity and fun-filled moments of entertainment and joy.

Hopefully this revitalizes a lot of hidden local multiplayer gems on Steam to give them a little extra boost in in the playability sector. This is also yet another reason why a lot of people stick with Steam instead of venturing over into feature-bereft storefronts like the Epic Games Store, where these kind of novel features are completely absent.

You can look for the Remote Play Together feature to go live during the beta test on October 21st, 2019.

(Thanks for the news tip GameZard)