PC gamers can now enjoy the ability to broadcast their gameplay, as Steam Broadcasting is now live.
The added functionality was "designed for ease of use, allowing anyone to view a friend's game by simply clicking on 'Watch Game' on their Friend's profile or Friend's List to open a window into their gameplay – no game ownership, special fees, or additional apps required."
Valve announced the news earlier today, noting that the functionality is rolling out in a new client update that you can download right now. Here's a full rundown of what's included in the update:
General
- Added Steam Broadcasting. See http://steamcommunity.com/updates/broadcasting for more info.
- Added in-game FPS counter to Steam Overlay
- When Steam has internally scheduled a game update to be queued sometime in the future, the UI will now display a note to the user indicating that time
- Fixed a crash preventing 64-bit Steamworks games from launching on older AMD processors
- Fixed starting Steam if instance is already running in other local Windows user session
- Fixed restoring game specific hardware mouse cursors when exiting the in-game overlay
- Fixed errors in web views not localizing properly
- Fixed occasional crash when trying to validate your email address
- Fixed rendering the Steam Overlay in some D3D8 games.
- Updated Windows Compatibility warnings
- Improved synchronization and smoothness of video playback
- Reduced CPU usage when drawing animated images or videos
- Reduced CPU usage when interacting with the main Steam client window
Big Picture
- Fixed to ask the user if they'd like to launch immediately or begin updating the game if an update is available but the game has been played recently
- When running in 720p mode scale embedded web views so they are readable
- Fixed EULA display occasionally failing to display
- Revised navigation on profile menu
- Fixed crash when entering a screenshot description
- Fixed displaying screenshots for games added by shortcut
In-Home Streaming
- Fixed severe frame drop in OpenGL games that occasionally occurred on some hardware
- Reduced impact on game frame rate in D3D9c games when not using hardware acceleration
Linux
- Fixed a rare bug where Steam could delete user files when failing to start
SteamOS
- Fixed some combo boxes in steam client settings accepting text input when selection must be made from dropdown
Will you be taking advantage of Steam Broadcasting?
