Steam Link

Steam Link is a free productivity app from Valve for playing PC games on a Quest headset. It streams titles from the Steam library on your own computer to the headset over your wireless network, so the PC does the heavy rendering work. It has been on the Meta Horizon Store since November 30, 2023.

What you can do

• Play games from your Steam library wirelessly in the headset.
• Talk about games with your friends on Steam.
• Open and use desktop apps from your computer.

Setup happens inside the headset. After you install the app, it walks you through connecting to a computer that has Steam installed and running and is on the same network as your Quest.

Valve lists these minimum requirements:

• A computer running Steam and SteamVR on Windows 10 or newer.
• An NVIDIA GTX 970 graphics card or better.
• A 5 GHz Wi-Fi 5 router.

For a better experience Valve recommends an Intel Core i5-4590 or AMD FX 8350 class processor or faster, 16 GB of RAM, an NVIDIA RTX 2070 or AMD RX 6600 or better, a Wi-Fi 6 or 6E router, a broadband connection, and a wired network link between the PC and the router.

Comfort

Meta rates the app as comfortable for most people. It supports sitting, standing and room-scale play with controllers. How a session actually feels depends on the game you stream, so check each game's own comfort settings.

Platforms and what to know before buying

• Price: free on the Meta Horizon Store.
• Headsets: Meta Quest 3, Meta Quest 3S, Meta Quest Pro and Meta Quest 2. Valve's own requirement list mentions only Quest 2, 3 and Pro, but the store lists Quest 3S as well.
• Internet: the store lists it as not required, but the headset and PC must share a local network.
• Ads: no in-app ads.
• Early access: no.
• Languages: dozens, including English, French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Korean and Chinese.
• Age rating: 3+.