How to Play Steam Games on Android

Steam, the popular program for buying and playing video games on your computer, just released their Steam for Android app that allows you play Steam games on your Android device. The new app, in beta, is called Steam Link and it basically allows you to stream any game on your computer running Steam onto your Android phone or tablet so long as they are both connected to the same Wi-Fi network.

Now, playing a full-fledged PC game on your Android phone would be pretty cumbersome, if we’re honest, so the new Steam Android app allows you to also use a separate controller via Bluetooth. There are only two officially supported ones, the Steam Controller and an Xbox One, but Steam says that it will work with other ones, their support team just can’t help you with them.

The whole concept is actually pretty ingenious, it’s not hard to set up, and it’s free, too. If you want to play your Steam games on your Android device, here’s a quick tutorial on how using the new Steam Link app.

Get Steam Running On Your Computer

First, we need our computer to be on, connected to the same Wifi we intend to use our Android device on, and have Steam open and logged in.

Steam for Android

Then we need to setup Steam on our phone.

1. Download the new Steam Link app from the Play Store (different than the Steam app, by the way) and then open it.

2. It’ll ask if you want to pair a controller (if you don’t have one here’s the cheapest place I could find to get the Steam official one and here’s a cheaper one that works but isn’t officially supported). Tap whether you have the Steam one or a different one.

3. If it’s a Steam one, it’ll walk you through that, otherwise, you need to follow your controller’s specific pairing instructions to pair it with the Android device. The one I ordered had an OTG adapter that plugged into a USB-C port (so it only works on USB-C devices) and a USB Bluetooth dongle for the controller that plugged into that. Soon as I plugged it in, it just worked, even on the Android home screen.

4. Make sure your computer and Android phone are connected to the same WiFi network and you should see your computer listed on the Connect to Computer screen. Select it.

 

5. It’ll let you know how good the signal is between it and the Android phone and you can then click Start Playing.

6. You’ll be brought to a mobile version of Steam and can use the controller to do basically anything you could on the computer with Steam. You’ll see your library of games, be able to access settings, chat, etc.

7. Select the game you want to play and just click Play.

8. You’ll be in the game after that and good to go.

And there you go, you’re playing your Steam Games on your Android device. Let me know in the comments below how that worked for you!