Samsung announced during the Steam Dev Days that they are doing streaming game support better. This is by integrating the technology directly into future smart televisions.
Game streaming has been the center for various companies over the past few years, bringing up new machines for customers. Some Samsung TVs already support streaming from services like PlayStation. Now, the company has announced it expects to bake in support for Valve's Steam Link as well.
What is Steam Link?
Steam Link is a $50 product from Valve that plugs into your television and attaches to your home network. It is, by far, the cheapest and easiest, yet the most entertaining part of bringing PC games to your living room.
Valve is partnering with Samsung to make Steam Link functions available direct from the manufacturer's upcoming TVs, according to tweets from Sergey Galyonkin (@SteamSpy). There are few other details available beyond that, including when to expect these to go on sale, but it's enough to give a quick idea on Steam for potential new TV buyers a reason to look forward.
"Steam Link will be integrated into the new Samsung TVs" #SteamDevDays
— Steam Spy (@Steam_Spy) Oktubre 12, 2016
Anyone hoping to stream some Steam off their TV will still need to afford their own controller, for which they have a few choices. There's the official Steam Controller, but others work through USB; it's unclear if that functionality will be introduced with the new smart TVs.
There are also questions and proposals about how much data would be accumulated in situations like this. We've seen varied cases over the past few years about how Smart TVs have been variously insecure and gathered data about their owners' usage patterns, often without the consent of the owners or users. There are also questions about the device security that should not be ignored, given how this type of smart TV is designed to hook into a local network and interface with a Steam-connected PC.
To sum it up, there's no specific proof to show that there's a particular problem with Steam Link. But smart TVs have had sufficient security problems that the sense of connecting one to your own local network is somewhat questionable.
