Steam Broadcasting is a terrible option for streamers.

[Sharpie The Dragon]

So for the years I've been testing this feature and I've always had one major problem with it. Particularly the lack of implementation and buggy design.

1. In 2020, why is there no 60FPS support yet? No option is there for me.

What is this feature designed for? Your friends? If so why even bother having it community made in the first place? It's literally just putting an inferior product on a market that excels in features like 60fps support.

2. The highest stream right now has about 4,000 viewers. The next one before that drops dramatically at 1,800. Then it's just a rapid drop from there.

CS:GO, the most played game right now with over 800,000 players has a top stream of 2 people.

Then you look at the Twitch numbers, hilariously stark in comparison[www.twitch.tv]

So if Steam doesn't want to compete with these platforms, why do we have a community section where players can promote their stream for others to watch in the first place? With lower quality resolution and with less features?

Like, so others don't need to download a streaming service like OBS and you basically say you want broadcasting to be an ease of access? It takes a person 5-10 minutes to download a simple software like this, make an account on a service like Youtube or Twitch and instantly you'll notice a difference.

And then you have a major chat platform like Discord, which loads of people use anyway and then you can stream to your friends that way. Like, why wouldn't you do that? The interface is so clean. Make a call, put your video on and boom. All your friends can see what you're doing. No hoops or anything.

It's a limbo between having friends watch your stream and having a community that mainly doesn't watch broadcasts on Steam, very strange. Not sure what type of structure Valve is going for here, but it obviously is in-superior.

3. Why is it that my stream suddenly stops and then restarts itself? I have a 75mpbs upload speed with over 350mpbs download speed wired connection playing on a decade old game (L4D2) that a potato can run? I'm literally getting the maximum FPS in this game with my hardware. My internet isn't suddenly dying here, I'm in a multiplayer game with 10-30 ping. I've had more issues trying to get my stream to work than actually playing the game.

I've been using Discord's stream feature way more than Steam's because it works as intended. Even if I turn my stream down to 720p in Steam, it still starts and stops. Been doing this for years, why has this not been fixed?

4. Why is the stream super delayed by 10-30 seconds? Why can't we have a simple feature to control something so basic?

5. My friend keeps getting stuck trying to load in the stream page.

Discord isn't having this problem. Not sure what's going on here, but obviously the stream is no use if people can't join it.

6. Why can't I setup hotkeys to disable/stop/start my stream?

Another basic feature that should be introduced.

[Sharpie The Dragon]

Originally posted by snowy:

what if i dont need bilion viewers and i just want to stream something for 1 or 2 people

If you want to stream something like there's a much simpler system; It's called Discord group chat.

Originally posted by snowy:

do you really think im gona dowload something what can only take more space on my harddrive and gona be useless in couple hours anyway ?

You mean to tell me in 2020 you don't have 100-300 mb worth of space to download a streaming program? It's a bit strange if you ask me, implying that it's going to be useless in a couple hours sounds like you'd never Steam Broadcasting again. Nice argument.

Originally posted by snowy:

i have better question why we have people like you to complain about everything ?

Because it's a forum? Because the feature is half finished like most features are in Steam? Take curation for example, you've got the same group of people spamming the exact same lines for a variety of different games. Lack of moderation, lack of implemented features, there should be no excuse why I shouldn't be able to stream 60 FPS with Steam Broadcasting in 2020. Valve is an enormous company and can't shill out for players to have a better service? Pretty disappointing if you ask me.

Again, if this was the prime function of friends only, make it so. But don't pretend it's a good replacement for actual streamers. Almost nobody watches streams in Steam because things like the actual quality is awful. If the thing even loads without being stuck in loop until the end of time.

[failxontour]

Well at the very least it's free. And if you don't like it stream somewhere else you obviously know the limits of the platform. And that's fine as we know Steam it can be very frustrating to wait on when it comes to fixing problems (aka. notrious Valve time kickin in) especially for features like this which are half-baked and haven't gotten the attention they might had deserved or they should have just brought some new ideas to the table. This really isn't great to use but it's useable non-the less if you aren't happy with the quality and content feel free to change the platform as you're not bound to this even if you think so.

I read this more as a review then a discussion anyway. Because what are we discussing here? It being not bad. It's not as good as alternatives so bad for most game streamers period.

I streamed a couple of times in the broadcast publicaly and for friends also had the issue of the stream cutting out on a wired cable connection with up to 25 Mbp/s upload speed. And its strange to stream to and ask people to use it this way nobody uses steam in this way. Hey wanna watch me play my games, join me on Steam? Sounds weird and nobody says that ever.

And it defintly shows that Steam UI hasnt aged particuarlly well and doesn't allow for those fluid interactions and great UX anymore unlike the competitors. I mean were are the creator dashboards, statistics and insights? That's essential stuff for a streaming platform. Where is my stream customization my custom links.

It's meh and that shows but really what did you expect them to do now? Their last announcement was 4 years ago in this group. They obviously either abonndend the project or have it put just on extended support till they pull the plug on it entirely.

[Yeshes]

What I hear in OP is frustration that with so many competitors to iterate on and learn from, they don't seem to have the impetus required to get the one thing that would allow them to scale - funding.

Let's face it, their bread and butter isn't streaming. And to really enter that arena, they need to do it well or not at all.

I'm new to the group (today), but not to the beta. I have streamed on every platform but Mixr over time and almost all of those games, via Steam using my personally set up OBS64 (before they got Prime®-d) via Streamlabs tryst).

To assume whomever is driving product management within Valve does not know their current offering isn't to even minimum competitive standard is insulting. They're in BETA for a reason. They're trying to figure out how much of a commitment they need to make standing up the kind of infrastructure they need to BE competitive... and how much risk that investment puts on their existing golden goose (for all the poor thing is starting to look a little frazzled).

It's not a call made in ignorance, but in strategy. Business, you know, where the dollar being made comes before the market being served and you should know this by now and back to your gaming, monkey.... don't make us throttle you.

(cough)

So great feedback to them, even if made in frustration and emotional intensity (no one gets angry over things that don't matter to them, eh?)

Perhaps the key to getting what you need is less about complaining that you're not getting something and more about finding out how to help the beta succeed so they can get the funding they (clearly) need to actually deliver something competitive.

Well, I think so, anyway.

[Sharpie The Dragon]

Originally posted by Ekajata:

What I hear in OP is frustration that with so many competitors to iterate on and learn from, they don't seem to have the impetus required to get the one thing that would allow them to scale - funding.

Let's face it, their bread and butter isn't streaming. And to really enter that arena, they need to do it well or not at all.

I'm new to the group (today), but not to the beta. I have streamed on every platform but Mixr over time and almost all of those games, via Steam using my personally set up OBS64 (before they got Prime®-d) via Streamlabs tryst).

To assume whomever is driving product management within Valve does not know their current offering isn't to even minimum competitive standard is insulting. They're in BETA for a reason. They're trying to figure out how much of a commitment they need to make standing up the kind of infrastructure they need to BE competitive... and how much risk that investment puts on their existing golden goose (for all the poor thing is starting to look a little frazzled).

It's not a call made in ignorance, but in strategy. Business, you know, where the dollar being made comes before the market being served and you should know this by now and back to your gaming, monkey.... don't make us throttle you.

(cough)

So great feedback to them, even if made in frustration and emotional intensity (no one gets angry over things that don't matter to them, eh?)

Perhaps the key to getting what you need is less about complaining that you're not getting something and more about finding out how to help the beta succeed so they can get the funding they (clearly) need to actually deliver something competitive.

Well, I think so, anyway.

Can we please ask why beta has been going on for six years with next to insignificant changes?

I don't know how qualified the Valve developers are but if you're going to make a streaming service, one of the first things you'd implement would be hotkeys to pause/unpause, stream/stop streaming your broadcast. It just seems like you'd find this in the trashpile of other abandonware material on the internet.

[Yeshes]

A six year beta is essentially admitting there isn't enough profit in it (yet?) for them to consider more than running a beta and collecting information. Prioritization is a thing, too. You don't build new things when you're still ironing out foundation (i.e., any technical debt, etc)... and providing games is more important to Valve/Steam (I believe/think is demonstrated) than this.

Simple, but not always fun to realize, I suppose. It would be unfortunate if they couldn't find a way to bankroll it... it's hardly cheap on the best of days and being able to demonstrate a trend to adoption is probably their hurdle (i.e., can't show the numbers because features aren't yet competitive, need more $$ to make them so... can't get $$ without numbers, etc.).

It's complicated and almost all of "this kind" of discussion never really sees public light (for good reason, candidly).

[failxontour]

Originally posted by Sharpie:

Can we please ask why beta has been going on for six years with next to insignificant changes?

I don't know how qualified the Valve developers are but if you're going to make a streaming service, one of the first things you'd implement would be hotkeys to pause/unpause, stream/stop streaming your broadcast. It just seems like you'd find this in the trashpile of other abandonware material on the internet.

It's a free service.
Get over it. You're very rude.

Stop demanding for quality and certain development. And if you think it's that easy to do or would be so easily done and question the qualification off Valve staff, I urge you to create your own for free then share it here so we can rip on it let's see how long it lasts.

[Sharpie The Dragon]

Originally posted by Klosteinmann:

Originally posted by Sharpie:

Can we please ask why beta has been going on for six years with next to insignificant changes?

I don't know how qualified the Valve developers are but if you're going to make a streaming service, one of the first things you'd implement would be hotkeys to pause/unpause, stream/stop streaming your broadcast. It just seems like you'd find this in the trashpile of other abandonware material on the internet.

It's a free service.
Get over it. You're very rude.

Stop demanding for quality and certain development. And if you think it's that easy to do or would be so easily done and question the qualification off Valve staff, I urge you to create your own for free then share it here so we can rip on it let's see how long it lasts.

Oh, well Twitch, Youtube and Discord are free as well and it can offer 1080p 60fps support. 30fps is like what? Six years ago? How far have we moved from then?

Keep in mind this is a corporation that took seven years to make a simple basic feature to stop random people from inviting you to hundreds of groups.

Just because it's free doesn't mean it's good. It's not like users can even pay for a better experience either. You are literally getting an inferior product with no way to improve your experience.

Therefore, you are helping your competition. Which have so many amazing features for free. Valve is acting like an indie studio; How I like to refer to them is this: Valve implements, Valve abandons.

There is no ease of access here because of how broken everything is. Want to record? Turns on and off constantly, friend can't view your stream? Too bad. Stream delayed by 45 seconds at times. Like, jesus christ how much tech debt does the Valve studio have? They can't even get image uploading to your friends right. Every time you try to upload an image you get 50 billion different errors saving why you can't upload this simple image.

Yet you look at Discord and you can upload 10 at once and there's no errors at all. And the Valve studio has had two full years to fix this bug.

Seems like to me tech debt studios need to sort some stuff out.

[Yeshes]

I'll put it to you this way, Sharpie - if you want it faster, I'm pretty sure you're going to have to fund it yourself. (sly grin)

That said, it would be helpful for them to give us some understanding of their current roadmap and if they have a set date or plans to schedule for one to progress from Beta to whatever comes after for them.

I didn't say they DO have technical debt issues. I just said that if they do (and most companies do at some level), it could be a factor.

But, again, it is FAR more probable that they don't have what they need to convince the folks who hold the purse strings to let them go further. Again... you need to prove concept to get funding and I don't think anyone is arguing that the concept IS proven at this point... are they?

My best advice to you is to try to understand it's actually not about the market at this point... clearly... and those "free" outlets you keep mentioning? They are making S*T*U*P*I*D amounts on brokering your personal data, habits, surfing, buying, clicking, geolocation, etc... social media sensors you. (Censors a lot too, but I find this variation much more fitting and quite poetic.)

If nothing else, remember that the simplest explanation is usually the truth. It doesn't make sense that a platform like Steam couldn't get streaming perfectly right if they had all the money, time, and resources in hand to stand it up.

It's MUCH more reasonable that for reasons none of us can see or understand, this effort lacks either support, priority, funding, or resources to get where it SHOULD be.

If that doesn't work... try this one - if posting pointed critique were going to solve matters - you wouldn't be here, six years later, saying the same things, now would you?

/tips hat and moseys on....

[Sharpie The Dragon]

Originally posted by Ekajata:

I'll put it to you this way, Sharpie - if you want it faster, I'm pretty sure you're going to have to fund it yourself. (sly grin)

That said, it would be helpful for them to give us some understanding of their current roadmap and if they have a set date or plans to schedule for one to progress from Beta to whatever comes after for them.

I didn't say they DO have technical debt issues. I just said that if they do (and most companies do at some level), it could be a factor.

But, again, it is FAR more probable that they don't have what they need to convince the folks who hold the purse strings to let them go further. Again... you need to prove concept to get funding and I don't think anyone is arguing that the concept IS proven at this point... are they?

My best advice to you is to try to understand it's actually not about the market at this point... clearly... and those "free" outlets you keep mentioning? They are making S*T*U*P*I*D amounts on brokering your personal data, habits, surfing, buying, clicking, geolocation, etc... social media sensors you. (Censors a lot too, but I find this variation much more fitting and quite poetic.)

If nothing else, remember that the simplest explanation is usually the truth. It doesn't make sense that a platform like Steam couldn't get streaming perfectly right if they had all the money, time, and resources in hand to stand it up.

It's MUCH more reasonable that for reasons none of us can see or understand, this effort lacks either support, priority, funding, or resources to get where it SHOULD be.

If that doesn't work... try this one - if posting pointed critique were going to solve matters - you wouldn't be here, six years later, saying the same things, now would you?

/tips hat and moseys on....

If they're doing all that stuff, then why wouldn't you something like a VPN? You're kinda shooting yourself in the foot if you let advertising build a profile of you. At least you're getting a far superior service compared to Steam Broadcasting. You get 60fps support, 1080p, more viewers, a less buggy design, hotkeys, donations if you make this your day job.

I haven't used Steam Broadcasting in months and just use Discord. If Valve designed this function to be for friends then they'd certainly make an effort to not make the interface broken.

The reason Valve updated their UI in the first place is because platforms like Discord were becoming the norm for communication; This hasn't changed at all. It's what happens when you allow your company to stagnate for too long, and then try to copy their interface style with 'channels' for groups. (Yes I know Discord copied from IRC but Valve's Steam doesn't even try to hide the sheer similarities).

I'm still wondering why we can't have something as basic as say a separate tab for broadcast hotkey support. Surely this wouldn't much to actually implement? You really need to pull strings from higher-ups just to do something like this? Or to do something like fix the country listing for your location where all the countries are bundled up alphabetically by their endonyms which has been a thing for nearly two months now?

If Valve can't do basic fixes because they're halted by upper management or whoever 'holds the purse-strings' then every company styled like this should be forgiven since it's out of their control. Let's not post criticism and instead just accept that stagnation is acceptable. I mean come on, six years? It reminds me of curation, same people writing the same exact words for 2,000+ games and don't get punished, yet people who make spam reviews get their review banned? Just another feature created only to be abandoned with no quality control.

[failxontour]

And who are you to fix that? You think this is something which isn't known or isnt being critizied with the higher up mentality on Valve Staff you think people don't know this. And the constant jumping from one product tree to the next in order to stay on the wave and stay relevant that's the Tech industry for you you're either in on the hype or your out.

The problem here is that you critizie a delivered product/service that has been abondended years ago and is only held on lifeline by not even a couple of people (Valve is pretty small in employee size compared to other companys there revenue size or that offer these products/services) which still regardless of counter-products a minority still uses this platform.

And yet still you act like by just shouting loud enough into the void someone will come and help you. No let's be realistic their wont because one of the main reasons even though I like this to be changed to because I like Steam as a platform it wont happen because the base and foundation of people demanding these changes is to small.

So ultimately in any talk or conversation about Steam broadcasting it's gonna end up to: "Is it really even worth the effort?" and to be honest with the market share they have it's not that's the unfortunate and disapointing answer move on. If you can't do that progranstinate here and ask questions like why arent they doing X or Y it be so easy and so quick to do. I don't know why they dont care. They dont care because they dont see any money in this.

This venture is dead for Valve there is no intention for them to revive it besides if they had someone which really was interested in bringing this back for whatever reason and they let them have all the saying in this. Which is unlikely.

[Sharpie The Dragon]

Originally posted by Klosteinmann:

And who are you to fix that? You think this is something which isn't known or isnt being critizied with the higher up mentality on Valve Staff you think people don't know this. And the constant jumping from one product tree to the next in order to stay on the wave and stay relevant that's the Tech industry for you you're either in on the hype or your out.

The problem here is that you critizie a delivered product/service that has been abondended years ago and is only held on lifeline by not even a couple of people (Valve is pretty small in employee size compared to other companys there revenue size or that offer these products/services) which still regardless of counter-products a minority still uses this platform.

And yet still you act like by just shouting loud enough into the void someone will come and help you. No let's be realistic their wont because one of the main reasons even though I like this to be changed to because I like Steam as a platform it wont happen because the base and foundation of people demanding these changes is to small.

So ultimately in any talk or conversation about Steam broadcasting it's gonna end up to: "Is it really even worth the effort?" and to be honest with the market share they have it's not that's the unfortunate and disapointing answer move on. If you can't do that progranstinate here and ask questions like why arent they doing X or Y it be so easy and so quick to do. I don't know why they dont care. They dont care because they dont see any money in this.

This venture is dead for Valve there is no intention for them to revive it besides if they had someone which really was interested in bringing this back for whatever reason and they let them have all the saying in this. Which is unlikely.

Well no wonder there's no demand when nobody uses it. They're actually wasting money by just allowing people to host for free without asking for anything in return. Instead, why not give users incentives to stick with Steam Broadcasting? With enough effort you could make this a market. I simply gave options from the original post to show you there is incentive to work on it and develop Steam Broadcasting into something far more superior than it is now. This service is like

You know what's weird is that their Remote Play feature actually has 4k 60fps support; Which is completely free like Steam Broadcasting. So why can't this feature get some love? Priorities at Valve are whack if you ask me.

You are right that this venture is dead, and it's sad that Valve confirms it is a stagnant corporation.

[Yeshes]

Ah, ok... it's not that you can't get what we're trying to convey, it's that you don't want to.... welp, I'm off to more enjoyable things. I hope you continue to find what you need under that there bridge.

[Sharpie The Dragon]

Originally posted by Ekajata:

Ah, ok... it's not that you can't get what we're trying to convey, it's that you don't want to.... welp, I'm off to more enjoyable things. I hope you continue to find what you need under that there bridge.

Respectfully disagree.

[Yeshes]

If you had to state your purpose for making this thread in one sentence, containing no more than 300 words, what would it be?

If it's anything other than "expressing my own lack of understanding that a beta project is still around because it hopes to move forward one day", you can respectfully disagree all you like, but all that means is I can add "dissonant" to the list.

Stupid notifications. Turning this one off now. Happy toll collecting!

[Sharpie The Dragon]

Originally posted by Ekajata:

If you had to state your purpose for making this thread in one sentence, containing no more than 300 words, what would it be?

"Stagnant company plagued with backwards laissez faire styled management that implements seemingly good ideas but then abandons them after losing interest."

Originally posted by Ekajata:

Stupid notifications.

Respectfully disagree.