PC is the hardest platform to play split-screen on, and it is not your fault
Consoles were built around the idea that two people might sit in front of one machine. PC never was. Every part of the stack assumes one person, one screen, one set of inputs - which is why you can own a thousand games on Steam and still struggle to find one that lets a friend pick up a second controller and join you on the sofa.
The good news is that the games that do support it are some of the best co-op games ever made, and the setup is a five-minute job once you know what to check. This page is the shortlist plus the setup, in that order.
Three things people mean by "split-screen", and only one is really it
Most confusion on PC comes from three different features sharing one word, so it is worth separating them before you spend money.
True split-screen divides the window into two viewports, each following its own character. It Takes Two, Split Fiction and A Way Out all do this, and they do it for the entire game rather than in a bonus mode.
Shared-screen local co-op keeps one camera and asks both players to stay in frame. Overcooked! All You Can Eat, Rayman Legends and Human: Fall Flat work this way, which is why they scale to four or more people on one machine while the split-screen story games stop at two. It is not a lesser format - for a party it is the better one - but it is a different thing.
Streaming a local game to a remote friendis Steam's Remote Play Together. The host runs the game, the guest receives video and sends back controller input, and only the host needs to own it. It turns almost any of the games below into something you can play with someone in another city, and it is covered in full on our one copy, two players guide.
The setup, before you buy anything
One controller per player, and let player one use the keyboard. Most PC local co-op expects the second player on a gamepad. A single controller plus keyboard and mouse is the cheapest working setup and often the most comfortable. If you need to buy that pad, our second controller guide covers which one works on which machine and why Windows games assume an Xbox layout.
Plug the controllers in before you launch. A surprising number of games only scan for gamepads at startup, so a pad connected halfway through a level simply will not appear. Connect everything, then start the game.
Check Steam Input is not fighting you. If a second pad is detected by Windows but ignored by the game, the usual cause is a per-game Steam Input override. Turning it off, or on, for that specific title fixes it more often than any other single change.
Read the store page, not the marketing.Storefronts list local co-op and shared-screen support as explicit features. If a game's PC page does not claim local co-op, no amount of settings will produce it - and that check takes ten seconds. Our methodology page explains what we verify from those listings and what we do not.
