As streaming becomes a bigger and bigger part of video games, it's not exactly surprising to see Valve jump into the action with today's newly announced Steam Broadcasting feature.

In its current form, Steam Broadcasting is pretty different from Twitch. There are no archives, no ads, and everything lives through Steam. You simply click on "watch game" while a friend is playing, and a broadcast begins. It's on-demand.

It's possible Valve could eventually develop Steam Broadcasting into a competitor for Twitch, but it seems more likely Valve wants to encourage players to purchase more games.

Right now, Steam Broadcasting is in beta, but you can get in by joining the Steam beta program. Valve warns bandwidth might be limited, however, so if a stream doesn't start, that might be your answer.

More details are available on the Steam Broadcasting website.

With Amazon possibly turning out to be Valve's biggest competitor this could be a big move.

I've tested it and my first impressions are positive. The stream had a delay of about 5-10 seconds. The chat was not instant but not extremely slow either.

It reminds me of the stuff Onlive was doing. Pretty cool

This also encourages the purchase of emoticons. Twitch users are into those, yeah?

It's amazing how seamless everything is. I started watching someone within seconds and had a friend start watching me. I also heard random dinosaur noises on someone's stream as they were watching a movie but I couldn't see their desktop.

It's just great how steam puts out substantial stuff like this with no teasing anything and the feature actually works great the first time.

In stead of ads, Steam can have a button somewhere that can automatically purchase the game being broadcast.

So any one of your friends can watch you play without any forewarning? That seems a bit creepy. I mean I suppose they are on your friends list for a reason, but what if I don't want people to watch me play :c

Assuming I'm understanding this correctly, I like the idea of being able to keep the option always on, but having video data only actually get upstreamed when someone is actively watching. That way, friends can check out what I'm doing if they want, and I don't waste bandwidth when I don't need to.

Considering the number of high profile games that are not available on Steam (League is the most noteworthy, but there are certainly others) I don't really see Valve developing this with the intention of taking on Twitch directly. But it's still a welcome addition and seems to be built with the level of quality I'd expect from Valve.

From the official Steam Broadcasting FAQ:

Who can watch my games?

The first time a friend requests to watch your game you'll be presented with the broadcast privacy settings. To make a change at any time, access the Steam Client's Settings panel and select the Broadcast tab to view your privacy settings.

Available settings:

• Only friends I invite can watch my games

• Friends can request to watch my games (default)

• Friends can watch my games

• Anyone can watch my games (public broadcast, can be found in the game hub)

Any game that you can get the Steam Overlay on can be broadcast on Steam. This includes games that you add via "Add a Non-Steam Game". People are already broadcasting League this way using Steam Broadcasting.

Wow, that's pretty impressive on Valve's part then.

As long as it doesn't affect my performance (like streaming to Twitch does), I'm all for this. I've got plenty of bandwidth to spare.

I'm glad Twitch is finally going away.

Count it. 15 minutes after the feature went up, someone figured out how to stream anime on it. :)

I have a feeling that Valve may disable streaming on non-Steam games, since one can add literally any executable to Steam. I add things like my Windows desktop and 3DS Max so I can use Windows-only software on my Macbook. The copyright issues are going to be a major problem for Valve if they leave Broadcasting this open.

I give it two weeks.

@sadisticwolf: You can use it to stream pretty much anything you can add through steam. Someone was streaming anime earlier but I think it got taken down because I can't find it anymore. Edit: It's back now.

@zerocrescent: And how long untill he get's banned from Streaming? Or Steaming?

Does it warn the user that they're being watched?

What's the lag looking like? Could this possibly be the answer to quick looks for giant bomb staff in two different states?

Well i certainly won't be able to use this.

Seems awesome though, would be cool for showing your fighting game combos to friends.

@forcen: It's still up and it has been for more than 1 hour. What's even funnier is that it's first on viewers.

It can currently totally be used for some very illegal things. Non-steam games, films, TV, you name it.

I just streamed some non-steam Mass Effect 2 and it worked fine.

I hope that non steam game broadcasting doesn't get ruined by copyright infringers. My friends and I have been playing a lot of WoW lately and it would be cool to have that seamlessly integrated into the feature as well as our regular steam games. I know I could use OBS/Twitch but that requires you to set up ahead of time and always be streaming in case someone happens to want to watch. Sounds like Steam's approach just broadcasts when it's being watched which makes more sense for someone like me that would have 0-2 Twitch viewers normally and just wants to share stuff with friends.

Or they could disable it for members who haven't purchased at least 1 game. I don't think anyone who's spent hundreds of dollars on their library is going to jeopardize it by abusing the streaming service, and having some small buy-in before the feature gets activated would prevent people from creating accounts just to abuse it.

From the official Steam Broadcasting FAQ:

What are the account requirements for broadcasting?

Accounts that meet the following requirements are able to broadcast games:

• Have made a purchase on Steam and are therefore non-limited accounts

• Are not currently Community Banned

First porn movie spotted. Streaming anime seems to be getting popular too, I wonder how long this will last.

@gike987: CoD and anime more popular than porn on steam broadcast. Tsk tsk.

There are no archives [....] It's on-demand.

@patrickklepek Just fyi, on-demand for video usually means that you can watch the video whenever you want, without having to adhere to a set broadcasting schedule. The fact that you can only watch this content live, without being able to watch archives later whenever you want, means that this service is not on-demand in that regard.

I'm a big fan of Twitch, but they're going to lose a lot of my traffic after this is in place. Go to a game hub and then click on the Broadcast tab; instantly see live gameplay footage (the best kind to decide if you want to buy it).

Also, now my friends that didn't want to go through the trouble of getting OBS set up probably won't mind me watching their game if they don't even have to set anything up!

@savage: well then – it was a good way to handle it!

Next time I'll RTFM

But will there be achievements based on how many views you have? Cause I think they got all of them at this point.

This broadcasting feature inside of Steam makes sense as a marketing thing. If you aren't sure if you want to buy Far Cry 4, click here to watch someone playing it now.

@mb: Well, now that someone's streaming porn, I expect that change to occur within 2 days (or 2 hours VST).

I used to have Kodi as a non steam game because I could launch it in big picture and it would still use my 360 controller (easier for comfy couch). I guess I have to stop because I don't want to illegally redistribute videos.

By default you aren't streaming publically. You have to opt in for it to show up for people not on your friends list and by default even your friends have to send you a request to watch.

Disable the feature? Or set it so it only allows people stream your game with your permission?

Does this have any impact on performance? I haven't done any streaming before, but I was under the impression that if you don't have dedicated capture hardware that there is a substantial hit to performance when you do software streaming like this.

Steam Broadcast is used to break copyright laws and stream porn? I'm shocked.

Wonder what'll happen when they find all the nude mods people are using. Because PC gaming.

That's what the Report option is for.

So anybody can watch anybody?

@spacecouncil: Not freely, this isn't the 60s.

Seems like they took down all the non-Steam games from the Broadcast list, the only thing that looks pretty unsavory up there right now seems to be a modded version of Skyrim. If you know what I mean.

Oh you mean the guy playing with a big-butt character model that also has a fully physics enabled 12 inch dangling penis? Nothing unsavory about that, surely!

That's what I thought too. I don't see this as that much of a competitor to Twitch, as Twitch has become more of a place to watch famous or otherwise high profile streams. Maybe Steam will become the place where you and a friend can watch each other game.

Go ahead, I have nothing to hide. NOTHING! Except for those rotting bodies in my cellar. But that's a private thing.

Anyhow, you can watch me play my hentai games, no problem.

It's a good idea, but I really wish they had a dedicated button or command for starting and stopping streams rather than having it tied to limiting who is watching and determining if anyone is in fact watching. Hopefully it will get added in since it's a pretty silly feature to not have and I imagine it's going to catch at least a couple of people off-guard.

Cools. This might get me to re-download Steam again. I don't like to buy games there anymore, but I can't imagine some people will take advantage of this at some point. People I like to watch, that is.

That last sentence sounded weird.

@sccdemir: Not only that, but the ones we already have become relevant.

does this work with non steam games? like ones added to the list yaknow

love to see the poor sap that trys to watch my game play we only have 32kbps outward data from DSL here