Valve Introduces Steam Broadcasting; Takes on Amazon's Twitch

PC gaming platform Steam will now let you watch your friends play their games at the click of a mouse. It's called Steam Broadcasting, and takes on the Twitch game streaming service - now owned by Amazon.

To use Steam Broadcasting, you first need to opt in for the Steam Client Beta in Steam's Setting Panel and ensure your friends do the same.

All you need to do is click on a button on a player's profile that says 'Watch Game', or when you see a friend in a game on your friends list, right click and select the same option from the dropdown menu. As for streaming your game, it happens automatically. You'll start broadcasting your gameplay the moment someone starts watching and end the moment you quit the game.

Furthermore, the feature has a slew of privacy options allowing you to select who can watch your games. These range from letting you set it so that you'll receive a request to watch before permitting it to keeping it open for all to see with the 'Anyone can watch my games', which broadcasts it on the game's hub and on the 'Broadcasts' section of the Steam Community.

Right now Steam Broadcasting works on the client for Windows 7 and 8 with Mac and Linux support to be added later. And there's no option to archive your footage just yet. Hopefully this should be added in the near future as well.

Valve's approach to streaming seems to be a lot more intuitive that expected, what with broadcasts starting automatically. It also sports a lot more options compared to streaming on the PlayStation 4 or Xbox One. Though Steam is prevalent in India, Internet connectivity isn't the greatest. It will be interesting to see how many make use of this feature here. Nonetheless, its a step in the right direction from a platform that's gone from strength to strength.