Putting on the green jacket
Razer took an open source app and made it simpler. A lead dev is all for it.
Razer, maker of green-hued gaming hardware and accessories, has entered the game-streaming space with its new—but not entirely new—app, PC Remote Play. It’s based on very good existing streaming tech and makes connecting a PC to mobile devices fairly simple. It’s worth checking out unless you have a hard-and-fast policy about avoiding software “utilities” from RGB-obsessed gaming companies.
That, or you’re already using and comfortable with Moonlight. Moonlight and Sunshine are the open source game-streaming client and server that wonderfully picked up where Nvidia’s Gamestream left off. PC Remote Play is based on Moonstream’s open source code, and Razer has made much of its own version’s code available.
You’re getting a few small upgrades when using PC Remote Play:
- You do not need to set up a Sunshine server on Windows and give it the proper permissions, pair it with codes, or the like
- Razer’s app creates a virtual display that matches your phone or tablet and turns off your PC’s screen
- Easier connection for playing remotely, outside your home network (presuming the app’s traversal techniques slip past your router)
- If you’re using certain Razer peripherals, like the Razer Kishi Ultra or Kishi V2, you’ll get advanced rumble feedback and other upgrades (though mostly on Android)
It mostly just works (and wants to install things)
I tested out PC Remote Play on my home network, streaming Avowed, Satisfactory, and the Monster Train 2 demo from my Windows PC to an iPad Air (5th generation/M1). To get there, I had to pair a Bluetooth controller (Xbox One wireless) to my iPad and install Razer Remote Play on it, and Razer Cortex on the PC. Razer would also like you to install other Razer apps on each device, like the Nexus game launcher on mobile, and something like two to three other tools on PC. With attention and small effort, you can skip past those things, make the two apps see each other, and start playing.
I intentionally touched as few settings as I could on each device (minus a curious poke or two at the “Optimize” option), and the experience was fairly streamlined. I didn’t have to set resolutions or guess at a data-streaming rate; Razer defaults to 30Mbps, which generally provides rock-solid 1080p and pretty smooth 1440p-ish resolutions. My main complaints were the missing tricks I had picked up in Moonlight, like holding the start/menu button to activate a temporary mouse cursor or hitting a button combination to exit out of games.
Razer’s app is not limited to Steam games like Steam Link or Xbox/Game Pass titles like Remote Play and can work with pretty much any game you have installed. It is, however, limited to Windows and the major mobile platforms, leaving out Macs, Apple TVs, Linux, Steam Deck and other handhelds, Raspberry Pi setups, and so on. Still, for what it does, it works pretty well, and its interface, while Razer-green and a bit showy, was easier to navigate than Moonlight. I did not, for example, have to look up the launching executables and runtime options for certain games to make them launch directly from my mobile device.
Streaming-wise, I noticed no particular differences from the Moonlight experience, which one might expect, given the shared codebase. The default choice of streaming at my iPad’s native screen resolution and refresh rate saved me the headaches of figuring out the right balance of black box cut-offs and resolution that I would typically go through with Steam Link or sometimes Moonlight.
Let a thousand streaming forks bloom
How would the folks at Moonlight feel about Razer getting their glowing-green hands on their hard-won streaming tech? Great, it turns out. Cameron Gutman, one of the founders and lead developers on Moonlight, told me by email that he was “very supportive of individuals and companies building on top of our software, provided that they respect the terms of the GPL (GNU General Public License 3.0).”
Gutman noted that a number of forks of Moonlight already exist, covering seamless virtual display integration, multi-session support, and support for non-US devices. And what Razer looks to be delivering here is a more user-friendly UI, Gutman wrote (he had not personally tested the software as of last week). That’s something from which Moonlight, and other open source projects, can often benefit.
“As with many open-source developers and projects, we can tend to write software that caters to more technical users (sometimes unintentionally), which leaves a gap for someone like Razer to come along with a team of UX designers and Product Managers to take things back to basics and tackle some of the papercuts that impact the experience of ordinary folks,” Gutman wrote.
I’m still using Moonlight and Sunshine because I’m comfortable messing with the nitty-gritty settings and also capable of setting up my own solution for remote access. But as a tool that covers the biggest PC gaming platform and portable devices, PC Remote Play is not a bad tool to keep in mind for gaming away from a PC desk.
Kevin is a senior technology reporter at Ars Technica, covering open-source software, PC gaming, home automation, repairability, e-bikes, and tech history. He has previously worked at Lifehacker, Wirecutter, iFixit, and Carbon Switch.
