Steam Broadcasting

[Kong Wen]

This is yesterday's news (which I think Spore mentioned in the chat), but it's worth putting here just because it's pretty huge. Valve is adding a livestreaming feature to the Steam client, called Steam Broadcasting. Steam has a huge customer base, and if they keep it ad-free, they're really going to have a powerful weapon to go toe-to-toe with big players like Twitch.

[Spore]

I don't know how it will handle very large numbers of people watching a single stream. From my current understanding, it is peer to peer unlike Twitch which is centralized and then sends out video to all viewers. Perhaps there is a viewer number threshold where it stops doing peer to peer and goes to a server. For now at least, this service absolutely excels at letting users quickly check out what their friends are doing. It is by and large automatic, seamless, and the performance hit is noticeable but not killer. This is a step up from streaming sites which often do not have fully integrated game streaming tools. All I know is that I didn't have to set up anything in order for my roommate to be able to watch me play Binding of Isaac over stream (this way he doesn't need to turn around in his chair. The future is now).

[Kong Wen]

This is a step up from streaming sites which often do not have fully integrated game streaming tools. All I know is that I didn't have to set up anything in order for my roommate to be able to watch me play Binding of Isaac over stream (this way he doesn't need to turn around in his chair. The future is now).

I'm going to test this out tonight or tomorrow. It sounds really convenient.

[Spore]

I'm going to test this out tonight or tomorrow. It sounds really convenient.

Make sure you are using the Steam beta client. You can join the beta within the settings menu on Steam... somewhere.