Valve Rolls Out Game Broadcasting Service For Steam

An anonymous reader writes: Streaming live video game footage has become increasingly popular over the past several years — popular enough that Amazon was willing to shell out $970 million for Twitch.tv. Now, Valve has announced a rival: Steam Broadcasting. Users signing up for the beta test have the option to broadcast the game they're playing. They have several options about who can see their stream: invite-only, friends only, and publicly visible. Viewing a stream is currently supported by the Steam client itself, Google Chrome, and Apple Safari. It only works on Windows 7 and 8 at this point, but Valve promises support on Linux, OS X, and Windows Vista in the future.

Comments

Games themselves are copyrighted

[tepples]

From the FAQ: "Broadcasts and chats should not include: Copyrighted material". Aren't the visuals in games themselves copyrighted?

sounds bad for Amazon's investment

[Trepidity]

The benefits of vertical integration seem pretty strong in this case; especially a lot of casual streaming will end up being easier via Steam since it's just built in. Managing non-public streams will also be easier since people already have Steam friends and can just use that same friends list for access control.

Big tournaments with more money at stake will probably still negotiate deals with a specific streamer, but a lot of just regular streaming, I would guess, will migrate off twitch.