Late last year, an update to some Steam partner site code suggested Valve could be working on a Stadia-like game streaming service. Something called ‘Steam Cloud Gaming’ popped up in the code at that time – and now it seems that term has reappeared in the platform’s latest client beta.
Dataminer Pavel Djundik on Twitter (via VG24/7) has posted some screens of code that appear to reference “operations” tied to a cloud gaming “service” of some kind. “Latest Steam client beta adds more support for Steam cloud gaming operations and timed trials,” Djundik posts, along with the code, which you can check out for yourself below. In the first image, you can see the phrase: “Methods for Steam cloud gaming operations”. Hmm.
“The timed trials and cloud gaming are related to each other. There’s ‘GetCloudGameTimeRemaining’ method,” he adds in a follow-up tweet, along with lines of code that refer to a “Steam timed trial” and a bunch of messages or prompts linking to how much time a user has remaining. In addition, the dataminer explains in a third post, “We knew about NVIDIA before, but this beta adds more methods for Steam to interact with the NVIDIA cloud.
“For example,” he says, “CloudGamingNVIDIAUpdateGameList.” Take a look at the code below:
Latest Steam client beta adds more support for Steam cloud gaming operations and timed trials. pic.twitter.com/EpdwXYVnCd
— Pavel Djundik (@thexpaw) May 25, 2020
It’s not clear just yet what these reported findings might point to, and it’s worth noting an upcoming Steam cloud gaming project or service of some kind hasn’t been confirmed by Valve. However, it does at least add some weight to the rumours that the studio might have its own foray into cloud gaming up its sleeve, aside from its other, existing options, such as Steam Link and Steam Remote Play.
We knew about NVIDIA before, but this beta adds more methods for Steam to interact with the NVIDIA cloud.
For example, CloudGamingNVIDIAUpdateGameList
— Pavel Djundik (@thexpaw) May 25, 2020
Given other tech giants like Google and Microsoft have their own cloud gaming services with the Stadia and xCloud, respectively, it probably wouldn’t be too surprising if Valve had decided to launch its own platform, too. We’ve reached out to Valve for comment and will update this story with any new information.