At the moment, the feature is in beta, bandwidth is limited

Dec 2, 2014 22:13 GMT  ·  By

The development team at Valve in charge of the Steam digital distribution service announces that it is introducing a new concept called Steam Broadcasting, which is designed to allow gamers to watch friends playing the games they own or simply stream their own experiences.

All those who are interested in trying out the new experience need to first opt into the Steam Client Beta stage, and in order to see someone else playing, they need to navigate to their Friend List, then select a name and choose the Watch Game option.

The official Frequently Asked Questions page for the new feature states, "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."

In order to broadcast games via the new Steam feature, gamers need to have bought at least one game and avoid Community Bans.

Those who just want to watch will need to have installed Steam Client, Google Chrome, or Apple Safari.

Gamers who are using the Steam Broadcasting feature also need to make sure that they do not attempt to show copyrighted content that should not be made available publicly, and other details about ownership are also covered in the Valve FAQ.

Because the feature is at the moment in beta, the company also makes clear that it has limited bandwidth available and that some gamers might be unable to stream as much content as they want.

Valve is actively aiming to capture market space from Twitch

At the moment, most gamers who want to see a video game played live, both on PC and on home consoles, are using the tools offered by Twitch, a service that has become very popular for its open nature and is used by a wide number of Internet personalities and development teams.

The announcement from Valve that it is working on Steam Broadcasting means that the company is actively aiming to deliver similar functionality directly through its digital distribution service, so that gamers no longer have to leave it in order to get the streams they want.

It will be interesting to see how long the feature will remain in beta and whether the most important broadcasters will make the switch to the new service or will remain linked to Twitch.

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