Valve Now Supports In-House Streaming

Streaming games is becoming a more and more popular pastime in recent months, which is depressing, because very few people are good at it and at this point it would take a miracle for you to get “big” as a new streamer, seeing as all the people who have gotten their fame streaming only have it because they were doing it before everyone else. See also: Lets Plays.

But still, it’s not stopping people from trying, god bless em’, and now Valve is helping people do that easily and conveniently. Valve has been talking about supporting streaming for a long time, but until recently that memo must have been in the same pile as Half-Life 3, because nothing’s really come of it. But now it’s officially been released, and Valve has put out this nifty webpage detailing how it all works.

But for those of you who don’t want to click links, here’s the lowdown: you know how you can see what games your friends are playing by looking at your friends list? Well, if you click on that friend, and then from the menu that pops up you click “watch game”—voilà, your friend is now officially streaming and you are the audience. That is, if your friend has streaming enabled.

Functionally, it’ll be more like a spectator mode than a stream for the majority of Steam Users, but it can be turned into a stream fairly easily. When someone first starts watching your game, you can choose who gets to watch—you can pick between nobody, only friends with permission, any friends, or anybody—and from there, if you make your profile public, just about anyone could watch you play games for as long as your heart desires.

And that’s it. It’s still pretty simple right now, but as in-house streaming goes, simple isn’t bad at all.

Still, without features like ads or donations, don’t expect to make your fortune quite yet.