News

Valve’s ‘Steam Link’ App Finally Approved and Available on the Apple App Store

TouchArcade Rating:

Here’s the last thing in the world I was expecting to write today: Valve’s Steam Link (Free) app, which allows you to stream the games from your Steam library to your iOS devices, is now available for free in the App Store. Why is that surprising? Well the saga of all of 2018 was Valve trying to release Steam Link on the App Store and Apple continually rejecting it. They originally announced Steam Link and Steam Video coming to iOS and Android just over a year ago, in May of last year. Everyone was pretty excited at the prospect of streaming their Steam library to their mobile device over a local network and being able to play full PC games in bed or even on the toilet. It was going to be the wave of the future.

Then just a couple of weeks later, right as Steam Link was scheduled to launch, Valve announced that Apple had rejected the Steam Link app due to “business conflicts with app guidelines" which most likely meant that Apple didn’t want Valve to be able to sell games on Steam through Steam Link on iOS. And you know what? That’s fair. I get why Apple might not want that happening, and Valve understood it too. So they removed the ability to purchase games through the Steam store while using Steam Link on iOS, but for whatever reason Apple STILL didn’t want to approve it. And that’s kind of the last we heard about it until Steam Link launched on iOS basically out of nowhere today.

I have no idea what caused the change of heart by Apple, or if this release version is significantly different in any way from the version we went hands-on with last year (minus buying games obviously), but whatever the case if you’ve been anxiously awaiting Steam Link for your iOS device you can finally make that happen, and only a year late!

  • Steam Link

    The Steam Link app brings desktop gaming to your iPhone or iPad. Just pair an MFI or Steam controller to your device, co…
    Free
    Buy Now