Stream multiple games at once w/ Steam

Question

I've been trying to figure out a way to make this work for the past days, yet I could not come up with a good solution. I have a friend who currently lives in Portugal. We've been trying to play a game called Hearts of Iron IV, a strategy game basically. I have a great PC, that's suitable to run the game multiple times, however he has a trash laptop, and we cannot play the game together. We tested Steam in-home streaming through Hamachi and it works like a charm. I'm wondering if there is a way to stream the game through Steam in-home streaming, so that both of us can play it, because currently, Steam in-home streaming opens the game, and I cannot alt-tab out or anything like that. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

As you have noticed, you cannot use your computer when your friend is playing. There is no way as far as I know to change that.

However one way I can think of that might work for you is to setup a Virtual Machine (eg VirtualBox or VMware), and install steam and the game on it. Then use that virtual machine for the steam inhome streaming for your friend. This way you can run that entire system in the background and open steam and/or the game for yourself to play.

Note that this requires a bit more resources since you have to run the virtual machine, and thus an entire operating system, besides the usual stuff.