Valve Launches Steam Broadcasting Beta

I’ve never been a fan of watching gaming streams, so forgive me if I don’t come off as overly enthusiastic on the subject. My old-man crankiness aside, the concept of “Let’s Play” has never been more popular, as evidenced by the fact that both Microsoft’s Xbox One and Sony’s PlayStation 4 have streaming features built right in. Twitch is the go-to service for all your streaming needs, but now it looks like Valve is challenging that.

In beta as of today, Steam is offering a new broadcasting feature, which allows anyone – both your Steam friends and the general public – to watch you you play. The feature is built into Steam, so you don’t have to leave the service to either host a stream or watch one. However, there is an option to use the feature from either Chrome or Safari if you’d prefer that over Steam.

This is the beta, so you’ll have to sign up for the beta version of Steam to use broadcasting. It also only works live for the time being, with no option to archive streams for later viewing. One can probably assume that that feature will come in at some point. Game streaming has become a huge business and it was only a matter of time before someone went after Twitch.

I just want to throw in there that calling the service Steam Broadcasting instead of Steam Stream is a crime.

via The Verge