Valve Introduces Broadcasting Features to Steam

@savage: That makes sense! Thanks!

I've enabled the beta but none of my Steam friends have. =(

does cigs66 know about this

@chiablo said:

Depends on your hardware, if you have a GPU (like gtx 600 series and up) with built in video encoding it should have almost 0 impact on performance, otherwise it would rest all on your CPU so it would not be so great.

As long as it's opt-in and all that this seems like a seamless and compelling feature. I would probably never use it but I know a lot of people would love it.

Tried it out both watching and broadcasting...seemed to work very well, neat feature!

The fact that I can just go to my friends list and click someone's name to watch them play a game is pretty awesome. You used to have to load up a streaming service and OBS or something and start streaming to show your friend something, but now it's just so simple. Awesome awesome.

Also it's genius how they've handled server load. You're not actually streaming until someone is definitely watching you play, so Steam avoids what is probably a bane for Twitch servers when hundreds of people stream to no viewers.

@tarsier: Yes it works with non-steam games.

This just give me a creepy voyeurism vibe. I assume Steam alerts you when someone starts watching, but the service as described does not sit well with me. All I can think of is clicking a check box and forgetting it then 4 months later get a notice that the guy I raided with a few times is now watching me play Far Cry. It doesn't sit well with me at all and I have no intention of enabling this feature.

@courage_wolf: there's different settings. it defaults to "friends can request to watch my games" so it will pop up a thing where you can accept or decline anybody trying to watch. You can also do "only friends i invite" , "friends can watch my games", and "anyone can watch my games." You get an alert when somebody starts watching. at least with the "friends" options. Not sure what the "anyone" option is like.

@patrickklepek: one more feature for the steam box

I'm not into someone watching me play. It feels creepy and I know I'd succumb to the observer effect (layman usage) whereas any identifiable or anonymous spectator will change the way I play. I want to play for fun, not to impress or worry about offending. As long as I can turn this thing off completely, I'm okay with it. However, I do believe that it could be improved if Steam tooled it so that you could assign a level of access on a game-by-game basis. In other words, anyone can watch me play Marvel Heroes 2015, friends can watch me play Borderlands 2, but no one can watch me play Dragon Age Origins.

I'd pay good money to watch that dude play rocksmith 2014.

Set your status to Invisible or Offline

@xymox: I hope they don't ban that kind of stuff. I like how UStream on PS4 said they know people are broadcasting garbage, but people are watching it. They are, I do. Don't get me wrong, some of those people broadcasting on PS4 are the worst, but I'm an adult and it serves it's purpose for entertainment for me sometimes. Sometimes you find an excellent stream also. Like a jeweler making jewelry one night and a drunk musician after a show who decided to keep playing in his house and broadcast it.

I have a good friend and when we get together we always head to it after many beers and see the train wreck. As long as it's not people having sex or fighting, I say it stays.

With the mods the same thing. As long as it's not straight up porn or sleazy to be sleazy, I don't think they should cut it. We are adults and if I find it funny, whose to say to me it's not? I know you didn't take a stance, so I'm not directing this at you, just a general statement.

I've always wanted to stream and back in August finally had everything I needed to start a Twitch stream. It's been a ton of fun and I've been doing what I can to build up my audience. Most of the games I'm playing are on Steam anyway. It seems like now people will have the option of which one to use to watch.

What I'm wondering is, is this a threat to twitch? As someone trying to build up my audience and get more follows and hopefully get partnered, is this bad news? I'm guessing the Steam version doesn't allow for all the creativity involving a Twitch stream like overlays, webcam, followers and notifications, song requests, green screen stuff, etc., but I guess they could eventually add stuff like that if they develop it further. As for now, are those things the only reasons why Twitch would still be the preferred way to watch someone play a game?

Patrick - You should mention that you have to accept the view request when someones clicks watch game on you.

@seeric: Part of this is no one is around watching you stream, then you're wasting bandwidth and valve is wasting bandwidth on something that is not getting watched.

There is a stop option, once it starts. It would still be nice to see them add some kind of start stream option as well, even just for testing purposes. I just don't know how much use it would be to stream to no one if they are not going to bother archiving it.

That's pretty interesting. While I understand the privacy issues, this is video games, not someone watching you though a window while you undress to take a shower. Hopefully they'll have a message warning and let the friend decide if they'll accept it or not.

@av_gamer: there is, you can also set it so only people you specifically invite can watch, so if you don't invite anyone there will be no streaming.

So far, it seems pretty cool. It's a smart idea to broadcast a new game from a user so that the consumer can jump in, ask questions and get an idea of what the game is before they buy. I wonder if this will evolve into Valve's community plan of rewarding helpful users. Maybe have a "buy game" button on the broadcast and for everyone who buys the game off of your stream you get, like 50 cents to your Steam wallet or something.

There's also a, "only friends i invite" option which effectively disables streaming unless you opt-in to it.

RIP Xfire. This is the last nail in the coffin it.

@djmoo: I'm assuming you would have to hit a broadcast button on your end too but I could be Wrong. If not yea it can be a little bit of a invasion of privacy.

@redefaulted: if your not using steam them where are you getting your games, they pretty much own the PC market.

@penguindust: While I agree, if I was playing a game, and it was just my gameplay footage and the game audio going out to people, I kind of wouldn't care at the same time...at that point it seems pretty inconsequential unless it had some performance hindrance.