Steam Broadcasting Now Open To Everyone

jones_supa writes: The beta test phase of Steam Broadcasting feature has been completed. It is now available to everyone by updating the client to the newest version. The feature allows users to watch and stream games to and from users on your friends list. Right-clicking the name of a friend who is in-game offers the option to "Watch Game." This will send a request which needs to be accepted by the player so that the spectator can hop in. A chat is also included. Steam Broadcasting was first announced late last year as an alternative to third-party streaming services like Twitch, Ustream and Hitbox.

Comments

Cool!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now who wants to watch me play Civ3?

Re:Cool!

[pushing-robot]

I know what I'll be doing.

Great! How do I disable it

[Anonymous Coward]

Not interested in this at all, especially since I've heard about people with beta issues where the desktop was being broadcast without them knowing, how do I disable it

Re:Great! How do I disable it

[Fwipp]

Just don't turn it on. Easy peasy.

Re:Great! How do I disable it

[_xeno_]

Settings, Broadcasting, change "Privacy Setting" to "Broadcasting disabled."

Although I'm pretty sure you have to explicitly choose to start broadcasting, although once you start, I could easily see Steam continuing to broadcast even after you left the game.

Re:Great! How do I disable it

[ganjadude]

i just dont get it TBH, i guess im just old now (29 haha) but i find the idea of watching other people that I dont know...play a game does nothing for me. I dont mind watching my friends play because, they are my friends. but I dont understand why people would want to watch people play a game. that to me is the definition of lazy. because you have got to be seriously lazy if you cant be bothered to pick up a controller to play and instead sit around watching people play.

Even worse is watching people talk about watching other people play games (like that south park season finale made fun of)

Re:Great! How do I disable it

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm with you. But steam broadcasting isn't really about broadcasting to random people. There's two main up sides of a steam implementation that involve integration with your friends list and the store page:

1. Watch your friends play games, or let them watch you. Is your friend involved in a particularly interesting game of civ 3, or a game you've never heard of? Request a broadcast so you can watch and talk about it! It's a type of "casually sit and watch your friends play a fun game" experience that I haven't experienced outside of sitting next to them on the couch.

2. Browsing games on steam? Something new on sale that you're not sure if you should pull the trigger on? Go to the broadcasts community tab and take a quick peek at somebody playing the game right now, see if it's worth your money!

Twitch.tv and other such sites are all about strangers and personalities trying to get your attention with their game broadcasts. Steam is about watching your friends play.

Re:Great! How do I disable it

[seepho]

The day I got Civilization 2 my friends sat around the Playstation all weekend to play it and shoot the shit. It's pretty much the same thing, except now I'm 1500 miles away when I bitch about Ghandi. And by the way, that South Park was a 2-parter.

Re:Great! How do I disable it

[dj245]

...I dont understand why people would want to watch people play a game. that to me is the definition of lazy. because you have got to be seriously lazy if you cant be bothered to pick up a controller to play and instead sit around watching people play.

I have 2 kids. You can't "watch the kids" and play a video game (the types I enjoy playing anyway) effectively at the same time. One or the other is going to suffer. Watching someone play a videogame is not a substitute for playing myself but it passes the time while the kids watch Frozen (again). Playing video games really needs 95% of my attention. If I had 80% of my attention available, I would watch a TV show or Movie. Watching others play video games is a background media, something to do when I can only devote 30-50% of my attention to leisure.

Re:Great! How do I disable it

[Triklyn]

depends, i've got people on my friends list who my watching could probably improve my game. movement, aiming and such. the in-game spectator mode isn't phenomenal.

Re:Great! How do I disable it

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you!

Re:Great! How do I disable it

[soupbowl]

With some friends and my wife, we have had drinking parties while we chat on mumble watching friends play games. We can't all be together so this lets us share the experience. Its also good for showing friends games you are trying to get them play but they live in another city. I won't say its not a niche, but Its a useful one for me.

Re:Great! How do I disable it

[AK Marc]

I found out by accident (when the kids tried to stream a game on my computer while I was doing something else), that if you log in multiple locations at the same time, you can remote control the other by streaming a game from it, then on the computer to be controlled, alt-tab to the application you want to share.

My son took over my game from me (trying to play a kids game on steam, only the appropriate ones are loaded, and if you are logged on multiple times, the most recent is "primary" and the rest secondary, and you can stream a game from the primary, but not run it locally, unless you go offline.

After figuring that out, I've played with it some as a remote-control program. Steam RDP.

Re:Great! How do I disable it

[AK Marc]

I've never had that work for me. What did they do to make it do that was always my issue. I know what to do, but do it poorly. Watching someone play golf well won't make you an expert, unless *they* watch you and tell you what you did wrong.

Re:Great! How do I disable it

[Anonymous Coward]

But what if you press the update-button by mistake and it runs "rm -rf /" -command?

Re:Great! How do I disable it

[SirMasterboy]

Does it help if I do this? I know a LOT of people who watch other people play sports and somehow that is OK.

"i just dont get it TBH, i guess im just old now (29 haha) but i find the idea of watching other people that I dont know...play SPORTS does nothing for me. I dont mind watching my friends play because, they are my friends. but I dont understand why people would want to watch people play SPORTS.

Even worse is watching people talk about watching other people play SPORTS (Sportscenter?)"

Re:Great! How do I disable it

[Anonymous Coward]

yea, I sometimes are too tired or too bored to play a game myself.

Also twitch is the interactive-tv we were promised would be coming in the early 1990's when the information-superhighway was coming up. you can chat with the presenters and they communicate back.

Also some game companies stream and talk about the updates to their games. Especially Trion Worlds (Rift, Defiance) is quite good at having feedback with the people in chat. But game companies are hit and miss. CCP (EVE Online), for example, don't communicate with chat much, but chat are full of trolls (maybe because of that). Other companies try to be too professional and impersonal, other are too amateurish without a plan on what to talk about.

Re:Great! How do I disable it

[_xeno_]

It's rm -rf /*, get it right.

Also that's only when you launch Steam for Linux if your Steam data directory is a symlink or if you use steam.sh --reset without having Steam installed.

Re:Great! How do I disable it

[X0563511]

My circle of friends do it to show stuff to each other - "look at this cool thing I did!" or "hey, I can't figure out why this isn't working."

We don't often watch each each other play just for the sake of it.

Re:Great! How do I disable it

[X0563511]

Tactics and strategies you can absorb this way, but physical skills (eg, aiming) are more like your golf example. Knowing that you should avoid the sand pit doesn't mean squat if you can't get the ball to land in front of you more than half the time.

Re:Great! How do I disable it

[AK Marc]

Watching someone golf will never tell you that your problem is under (or over) rotation of the wrists (a common problem). As that detail is hard to see in someone else swinging. Watching games seems mostly like that for me. I see you are spinning around and jumping in a physics-defying move. But I don't see that your fingers work together to adjust aim when jumping in a second-nature way so as you jump up, you target down to keep the crosshairs on the same target.

Re:Great! How do I disable it

[ganjadude]

Good call. I watch sports, but I used to play but you have a valid sports ftfy there

Re:Great! How do I disable it

[Darinbob]

What if you don't own the game, and just want to see your friend demo it? Or your friend is showing you how to find the secret level, but without all the hassle of making a video. Yes, it's not very special I agree.

There are a few other uses but those come with drawbacks of having to add strangers to your friends list. Which maybe says it all right there; it's about social networking, so if you still think twitter or instagram are a bit weird then no way would this make sense.

Re:Great! How do I disable it

[Triklyn]

nah, movement tricks, positioning, how often they check their six etc, how they fight certain enemies, not necessarily tactically, but if it's just aim/reaction or if it's something else. how long they take traversing the map, and how long do they spend entering a room etc etc. what they aim for in a clusterfuck etc etc.

also, for smaller games that don't have massive followings. could help sharing information.

Re:Great! How do I disable it

[Agripa]

I watch game-play videos to see if a game is worth buying and sometimes to get ideas about how to play more effectively.

Re:Great! How do I disable it

[DrGamez]

Anonymous Coward

Re:Great! How do I disable it

[DrGamez]

Why do people watch sports?

How do you get to 29 years of age and still not understand this?

Re:Great! How do I disable it

[timftbf]

Are you trying to counter the OPs point, or re-enforce it? ;)

Watching or playing sport has zero appeal for me; watching people play video games is pretty much the same. People talking about sport makes me want to gnaw a limb off to escape from the conversation.

Re:Great! How do I disable it

[cwsumner]

... People talking about sport makes me want to gnaw a limb off to escape from the conversation.

Ha! You and me, both.

But then, I never had a chance to learn all of the details of the sports in question. Maybe that makes a difference.

Re:Great! How do I disable it

[Vintermann]

You sat around playing Civilization 2 and injecting heroin?

Re:YAY

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah it's exactly the same as kotaku.

Trademark conflict

[future assassin]

with Steamcast? http://www.steamcast.com/

World's most useless feature

[Anonymous Coward]

I get that this is Valve just taking their existing "in-home streaming" feature and realizing they can also broadcast the video to other people, but this is the world's most useless feature. Who the hell wants to watch other people play games when you could be playing them yourself?

Re:World's most useless feature

[Anonymous Coward]

• People who want to preview before they buy
• People who are interested in the story of a game but not actually playing it.
• People who want to watch someone better play a game.
• People who are waiting for their friend to finish playing so they can join in.
• People who are doing something but want background noise/entertainment.

Re:World's most useless feature

[CronoCloud]

Who the hell wants to watch other people play games when you could be playing them yourself?

That's what I said. But then I started watching a few streams. You can pick up tactics, skills, ideas from streams. You can also help out new players, or watch a game you're interested in buying. It has it's uses.

Re:World's most useless feature

[ledow]

And in the same response I have for people who point me at YouTube links to "teach me how to do something":

You're telling me it wouldn't be quicker to google a page of tips for the game?

Fuck sitting through a ten-minute video about how to click on a certain combination of buttons in some software, and double-fuck watching random streams to pick up game tactics as opposed to PLAYING THE FUCKING GAME against/with those same people.

Re:World's most useless feature

[houghi]

I would. I am lousy at playing games, but I really like watching others play. And I am not alone

Re:World's most useless feature

[CronoCloud]

You're telling me it wouldn't be quicker to google a page of tips for the game? Fuck sitting through a ten-minute video about how to click on a certain combination of buttons in some software

These days, tactics and strategies aren't just like "Jump towards the opponent and press down, down-right, right+strong attack" Games are more complex, with some things "seeing" things can help. It also depends on the game. It's not a all or nothing thing.

Re:World's most useless feature

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the hell wants to watch other people play games when you could be playing them yourself?

At least 33,878,727 people according to pewdiepie's subscription counter

Re:World's most useless feature

[Anonymous Coward]

Let alone add why the fuck would you want to be a gamer in the first place.

Get a fucking life and go outside.

Re:World's most useless feature

[Sowelu]

I adore watching speedruns. Okay, it's not the Olympics, but it's still fun to watch someone demonstrating a lot of skill.

Also to make streaming more personal--I remember that Zork: Grand Inquisitor had a multiplayer mode. It's your standard Mystlike first-person puzzle game, but you could let someone be a backseat driver, talk to you, point at things. It's not for everyone, but if you actually liked playing those games as a group and someone's moved across the country...yeah, pretty nice.

Re:World's most useless feature

[Triklyn]

sometimes you get to a point where nothing you do is making you good enough to beat those people. and maybe spectating some of them might help.

i'm probably somewhere near the point where spectating some of the better players in ns2 will help me against them or against people like them.

Re:World's most useless feature

[Anonymous Coward]

You can do all of those things with a precorded youtube video. Watching it live is not neccessary.

Re:World's most useless feature

[AK Marc]

Why do you hate choice?

Re:World's most useless feature

[alvinrod]

The expression "a picture is worth one thousand words" comes to mind. Sometimes it's far easier for a video to highlight something than it is for us to read a text description. For example, navigating a 3D environment in order to locate some items for yet another idiotic fetch quest, especially if we're new to that environment and it's not entirely clear where everything is at yet.

Re:World's most useless feature

[X0563511]

Someone should tell Twitch that their business isn't necessary.

Re:World's most useless feature

[Anonymous Coward]

For some things, yes, you're right. I don't want the video, I want "the answer".

But as a few replies here have pointed-out, sometimes "the answer" requires more than text. Sometimes, it requires a demo. Sometimes, it requires commentary.

And sometimes, I don't want to actually do that complex thing. Sometimes, I just want to witness the finesse involved, and I'm satisfied with that.

But aside from answer-seeking, watching people play games can be genuinely entertaining. There is an emerging market of entertainers who play games and commentate while doing so, and there is a growing audience of people who find this form of commentary to be entertaining.

You may not enjoy it yourself. You may find it insufferable. But it exists, and there's Big Money in it.

(and, as an analogy: there seems to be a lot of money in what the NFL does. the money comes from a lot of people being interested in a very small number of people playing a game. the people that recognize the value of that analogy are making a lot of money from video game streaming....)

Re:World's most useless feature

[dissy]

Who the hell wants to watch other people play games

Only a few hundred millions of people...
https://www.youtube.com/result...

when you could be playing them yourself?

Only idiots that think and insist those two things are exclusive and that you can't do both.

Re:World's most useless feature

[Anonymous Coward]

so no one wants to watch football then?

Re:World's most useless feature

[LazyBoot]

Umm... you can't watch a friend while waiting for his game to finish via a pre-recorded video...

Re:World's most useless feature

[Darinbob]

I suspect that's been done already.

Re:World's most useless feature

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the hell wants to watch other people play sports when you could be playing them yourself?

Re:World's most useless feature

[Anonymous Coward]

Not some times. Play a sim game like DCS a10c and you'll quickly realise text guides are useless.

Re:World's most useless feature

[Daniel Hoffmann]

Me and my friends regularly watch each other play dota2 while we are waiting for everyone to join the same party to get a game rolling.

Re:World's most useless feature

[DrGamez]

Anonymous Coward Posts Ill-Informed Opinion

"I'm a big idiot", later added.

Re:World's most useless feature

[Vintermann]

Same reason people watch other people play sports.

Hell, in most IRC channels, people do exactly what they do in a Twitch chatroom, but they don't even have anything shared to watch!

Re:World's most useless feature

[Vintermann]

Well, one of the things I like to watch on twitch is Spelunky runs. Every run is different (random levels, don't you know), and the streamer interacts with chat in between levels (sometimes in the middle of levels, if they're reckless). They also have a "death roulette" function, so you can compete in guessing how the streamer will kick it, obviously that's one thing that won't work with prerecorded video.

Re:World's most useless feature

[Vintermann]

If there's a specific piece of knowledge you want to get, reading the wiki is better. However, if you don't know much about the game and just want to learn as much as possible, watching it being played is far better. Sometimes videos are better even for specific knowledge (think for instance Super Meat Boy levels).

Re:World's most useless feature

[Vintermann]

Who the hell wants to watch other people sing at the opera when you could be singing yourself?

Re:YAY

[Krazy Kanuck]

except corporate websense doesn't block /. whereas kotaku is, and earns me dirty looks from by boss when he is asked to review the audits...

It's actually a nice feature.

[preflex]

I've found Steam's broadcasting feature to be quite handy for getting a handle on the basic mechanics of games with a steep learning curve, such as Crusader Kings II. If you tell a player you're watching him for the purposes of learning the game, he will often slow down and explain his actions.

I also like to watch FTL. It's fun to be a back-seat starship captain, and many of the players like it too, as having an extra set of eyes and ears can be helpful for catching things you might overlook: "Uhh, dude ... Your ship is on fire ... ".

Re:It's actually a nice feature.

[CronoCloud]

It's fun to be a back-seat starship captain, and many of the players like it too, as having an extra set of eyes and ears can be helpful for catching things you might overlook:

I'm a back seat minecrafter. Just watching guys randomly mine caves without any organization, or collecting wood at night...outside, or not having any walls just makes me scream.

Re:It's actually a nice feature.

[Gaygirlie]

Me, I don't really like watching other people play, per se, but every now and then I stumble upon a game on Steam that looks interesting and then just with a few click of the mouse I can actually check out what it looks like when being played for real. I find that pretty great.

Re:It's actually a nice feature.

[Jupix]

It's also well implemented. I tried the beta with a friend a few days before the final release. It has a way shorter delay than Twitch, about 8-10 seconds only (last time I broadcast with Twitch, the delay was something like double that). It was also very stable and bandwidth-efficient, both for the broadcaster and the viewer. It didn't stop to buffer even once during our test stream which was on full quality (I think about 3000kbps - a very nice quality 1080p gamestream). Both of us were on quite normal broadband connections, and quite regularly suffer unstable streams with Twitch. I think the only criticism from the broadcasting side was that it caused some microstuttering in some games, like Skyrim. In others it doesn't do that. I also doubt it's ever going to be as light as a streaming mechanism as ShadowPlay, but I hope I'll be proven wrong on that one.

Pointless

[damicatz]

It isn't open to everyone. It doesn't support any web browsers other than Chrome and Windows 8Internet Explorer. They won't be competing with Twitch anytime soon with those restrictions.

Re:Pointless

[KermodeBear]

And you're prohibited from using Chrome because...?

Re:Pointless

[ganjadude]

what OS cant run chrome???

Re:Pointless

[damicatz]

Not going to switch to another browser for one website.

Re:Pointless

[jeffmflanagan]

So use it for all websites. Chrome is likely better than whatever you're currently using.

Re:Pointless

[vux984]

So use it for all websites. Chrome is likely better than whatever you're currently using.

Why are you here? Got nobody to talk to on G+ ?

Seriously. I have no interest whatsoever in using Chrome for anything, let alone everything. I just don't like Google THAT much... or at all really, when you get right down to it.

Re:Pointless

[Edgewize]

It's built into the Steam client, and is primarily a private client-to-client "broadcast". You request to watch a friend, the friend accepts, now you're watching his or her game.

Web viewership for public streams is just a bonus because they built it around h.264 video segments and Chrome and IE11 can play those back with a bit of javascript work.

Re:Pointless

[Anonymous Coward]

Steam Broadcasting is coded to html5 video standards, so either swap to a browser that is caught up to the times, or quit complaining and wait for it to be implemented in your browser of choice. If you're using firefox, it's at least partially enabled in the latest nightly builds.

Re:Pointless

[dj245]

what OS cant run chrome???

With each new release, my low-powered devices get even more sluggish with Chrome. My Lenovo Tablet 10 is a speedy little tablet- everything on the tablet is fast. Except when I open up more than 4 or 5 tabs in Chrome. The memory usage and high CPU usage (when idle / not loading pages) is getting completely out of hand.

I have 4 tabs open right now -Random webpage 38mb ram, Gmail 147mb ram, Facebook 112mb ram, this window 135mb ram. Add the "GPU Process" at 195MB ram, and the "browser process" at 177MB ram, and we're up to 804MB of ram. That doesn't include any extensions. That seems ridiculous for a web browser with 4 tabs open.

Re:Pointless

[CronoCloud]

/me waits for edge case obsessed Tepples to start talking about game consoles that can't run Chrome.

And non-x86 Linuxes can't run Chrome! Would Someone Think of The Edge Cases!

I did actually check the site in the PS4 web browser, just in case Steam thought it was Chrome or something.

Re:Pointless

[CronoCloud]

It's built into the Steam client, and is primarily a private client-to-client "broadcast".

Reading up, it works like Share Play does on the PS4, except without the actual control sharing.

Re:Pointless

[Anonymous Coward]

That's pretty much what's turned me away from Android devices, cellphones and tablets both. Google+ that is, not Chrome...I'm so indifferent about Chrome that I can't even say I have an opinion about it. The only downside I can think of is that it doesn't have noscript like Firefox does, though there is an option to turn javascript on and off entirely. The only upside I can think of is...um...I'll get back to you?

Now I know, you don't -have- to use the Google Play store, with some difficulty you can root the thing, install custom firmware, there's a lot of plus sides. Unfortunately there are two, really HUGE downsides, in my opinion anyway:

1) A lot of apps, particularly games, do not have full functionality unless you sign in with your Google account...and further, make a Google+ profile. The other, related problem is that,

2) Google+ just isn't very good. Oh, it's not terrible. Google is already mining everyone's data so they're not much worse than Facebook when it comes to privacy...but they don't offer much more than Facebook does either. Facebook offers one, consolidated location for one specific purpose...Google+ tries to be a component in too many of Google's other pieces of software, if they would stop trying to tie Google+ into everything Google related on Android devices, I might buy another one.

Not very likely at this point, though. Have a touchscreen HP Pavilion now running Fedora 21...the touch interface even works and the on-screen keyboard doesn't suck. GNOME3 was obviously made for touchscreens which is probably why it received so much backlash at the time...there weren't actually any touchscreens to run the stuff on for a while. Now that there are, it's surprisingly functional. For an extra $100-200, not much when you're buying a top of the line tablet, you can buy a 11" screen laptop that does everything a tablet can and more. Plus, you can actually run whatever OS you feel like on it. Don't like Windows? Enable legacy boot and install something else, it's pretty seamless. Not perfect of course, but nothing ever is :)

Re:Pointless

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed the fucking point.

Re:Pointless

[X0563511]

There's a difference between "I can't" and "I won't."

I fall squarely in the "I won't" camp. I just don't like it, and everything I don't like about my current browser seems to have been inspired by Chrome.

Re:Pointless

[aliquis]

It doesn't support any web browsers other than Chrome and Windows 8Internet Explorer. They won't be competing with Twitch anytime soon with those restrictions.

Mean-while over here I think twitch only work in IE for whatever reason (Adblock, Flash, .. Actually I think some maybe FlashBlock white list thing fixed it?) .. anyway. Why it doesn't work here isn't important. It's likely up to my configuration.

What's more important is that it seem to require Flash at least.

So yeah.. so much for "Oh but it requires .."

(Codec thing? Didn't Firefox get H.264 support by Cisco or something?)

Re:Pointless

[Actually, I do RTFA]

/me waits for edge case obsessed Tepples to start talking about game consoles that can't run Chrome.

What about people who don't want to run Chrome? Or who only run Chrome within the google app space?

Re:Pointless

[eWarz]

They won't be competing with Twitch anyway. Alongside an average 20% drop in framerate across most games (tested with: Radeon 6970, Geforce GTX 750 ti, and others, including onboard AMD/intel graphics.) it tends to be rather buggy (friends frequently get bumped from streams), has next to no marketshare (everyone uses twitch), and no opportunity for revenue generation. In the mean time, OBS runs near flawlessly (no noticeable framerate decrease on most machines), supports several different streaming platforms, and much more.

Re:Pointless

[KermodeBear]

So you're complaining that it isn't open to everyone because it doesn't support a browser that you like to use, even though you have complete freedom to use a browser which is supported by the site at zero cost to yourself. Zero.

As an alternative you can just use the Steam client itself, which supports everything you need.

That isn't Steam locking people out. That's you locking yourself out for no reason other than pure stubbornness and a need to bitch about a free service.

Re:Pointless

[DrGamez]

It's not meant to compete with Twitch. It's meant to be a single button streaming for ease of use. It does what it says on the tin and nothing else.

Why must it compete with Twitch?

You can only broadcast on Windows.

[CronoCloud]

While you can watch streams on Linux and OSX, you can't broadcast with those OS's, not yet anyway. Minecraft's built in streaming doesn't work on Linux either, and Linux users still don't have that promised OBS port.

Buy your kids a chemistry set...

[Grog6]

I got my first one when I was 5, my really nice one when I was 8.

Amazingly enough, electronics were more fun than explosives; hooda thunkit?

Your kids will do better if you're only there for the bigger problems; hovering is not good.

Re:Buy your kids a chemistry set...

[Harlequin80]

As someone with a 18 month old and a 4.5 year old then yeah absolutely the 4+ year old could have a chemistry set and you could do something else. Though unfortunately her preference is to colour in my little ponys.

As for the 18 month old. Lets see, could I realistically leave her alone for any length of time? If I was to put her in a playpen, with nothing too small, and prevented older sister giving her anything I could probably leave her and she will just scream, but I could ignore that right? Or she could be let out, want all of big sisters toys (most of which are prime choking hazards), want to climb on the sofa but face plant in the attempt, try to eat the cats tail, open and close cupboard doors really really hard. Yep I can give her a chemistry set and go play games!

RaTs!

[doccus]

I thought it said "Steampunk" broadcasting... ;-(

I guess I'm not everyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only availible to a portion of Windows users. Broadcasting is not enabled on OSX, Linux, or Windows before 7.