My kids and their friends have lots of games that they want to play together.
If the game supports online multiplayer, through some game server, they're fine.
Is there some easy way, ignoring steam, for them to be playing as if they were on the same network, couch coop, sitting side by side?
I can do whatever is required on my sons computer – but I can only do basic requests for his friends.
How can I make sure they can connect their PC games, no matter what?
I think I can get them to each install some software to do this, and I've tried Hamachi, but that didnt seem to work – they still seemed to have firewall issues.
PS: As an aside, this seems to me the main difference between consoles and PCs, that and controller support.
Best Answer
Try Parsec . It allows for low-latency couch co-op through mirroring your sons PC on his friends and has full controller support. Setup on host and client ends are super simple and it has support for mac and linux too. This does mean that the game being played needs to support local co-op, like Cuphead or Spelunky. I play Super Smash Bros. (through emulation) with my friends using this method and it works well. I know you said to ignore Steam, but Steam has its own remote play function that it implemented recently that works similarly to Parsec, though I haven't used it enough to give a fair comparison.