Steam Broadcasting Public Beta Begins Today: Aiming For Twitch

The team at Valve responsible for making Steam a do-it-all station for gaming have really, truly been giving it their all over the past year. Music Streaming, Living Room Sharing, and now Live Streaming. It's as if they want to KEEP Steam as the one-stop-shop for all things AAA games – and Indie games while their at it. Here with Steam Broadcasting – live for the public for the first time today – they're aiming to take on Twitch, the largest name in game streaming currently on the market.

Using Steam Broadcasting is very, very simple. If you're planning on using it for the first time or as an alternative to Twitch, you might want to start by watching some streams that are already live.

To watch a live stream now, you'll want to head to your list of friends. One of them will need to be streaming, of course – and you'll see a button that says "Watch Game" right next to what'd normally be the only button – Join Game. From there you can watch over their shoulder and scream at them and insult their skills accordingly.

You can also head to the Broadcasts Tab in Community Activity. There you'll see all the newest Broadcasts that are happening live and publicly.

Embedding of broadcasts is not currently supported – but we'll expect it in the near future.