Steam to Challenge Twitch With New Broadcasting Feature


Move over, Twitch. There's a new game broadcasting service in town - Steam.


Valve on Tuesday announced a new broadcasting feature for Steam, which lets you watch your friends play with the click of a button. Launching today in beta, the feature lets anyone view a friend's game by simply clicking the 'Watch Game' button in the person's profile or from the Friends List. You can also invite specific friends to view your game if you want to show off your skills.


Best of all, the feature is free for all Steam users, and you don't have to own the game yourself or download any additional apps to use it. At this point, you can't save your broadcasts, they're only viewable live.


The first time someone asks to watch your game, you'll see a list of broadcast privacy settings. You can opt to let anyone watch, limit it to just friends, make it so that friends first need to request to watch your games, or allow only those you personally invite. When you end the game, your broadcast ends automatically, too.


The beta is open to everyone who opts into the Steam Client Beta via the settings panel. From the main menu, select Settings, then Account, and change your 'Beta Participation' to 'Steam Beta Update.' Valve warned that bandwidth may be limited during the beta.


Broadcasting currently works on the latest versions of the Steam client on Windows 7 and Windows 8 as well as Chrome and Safari. Support for Linux, OS X, and Windows Vista is coming in the future.


Valve is seeking feedback on how to make the feature better, so head over to the company's update page if you have any ideas.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

5 Reasons iPhone 6 Won't Be Popular

Eset nod32 ativirus 6 free usernames and passwords

Apple's self