Forza Horizon 4 to Encourage a "Stream-to-Earn" Reward System with Mixer

In Microsoft's never-ending quest to get people to actually use Mixer, they're announcing a new incentive to gamers for broadcasting when they play Forza Horizon 4.

This comes from a report by Ars Technica, who had a chance to speak with Benjamin Penrose, the art director of developer Playground Games. Coined as a "stream-to-earn" system, when Forza Horizon 4 players broadcast their gameplay to Mixer, they will earn additional in-game currency.

This currency is used to purchase new vehicles, as well as to upgrade the in-game events, which unlock more races and events to participate in. No details were given as to just how much players would get for participating in this system, nor if this will work with non-Mixer outlets like Twitch and YouTube Gaming, though we're gonna go ahead and assume it won't.

There are a number of problems with this idea. As game videos and "let's plays" become more and more popular, a larger number of people are looking to get into live streaming as either a hobby or with the aspirations of it becoming a career. Already we're seeing a massive oversaturation of broadcasts, a majority of which have as much production value as they do viewership. To incentivize broadcasting for in-game rewards only encourages an influx of minimal effort live streams, furthering the current issue. Of course, this is an effort to increase viewership toward Mixer, but I'm hard-pressed to believe that this won't build the wrong kind of community for the service.

To each their own, I suppose. Forza Horizon 4 releases on October 2, 2018, for Xbox One and PC.