Twitch is adding direct video uploads next year to compete with YouTube

Twitch is going after YouTube’s gaming business. The company today announced that it’ll soon allow users to upload videos directly to the service. This is a first for Twitch, which has so far focused on live / archived broadcasts of gameplay, and it means popular personalities like PewDiePie will be able to upload videos much like they do now on YouTube. According to the press release, that’s coming in 2016.

Last month, the Google-owned video platform launched its own dedicated video app and site in direct competition with Twitch, highlighting its recent 60fps video streaming capabilities (which are actually pretty great) as well as the content like “let’s play” videos.

As part of its keynote, Twitch today also announced that it’ll be rolling out a full HTML5 player (select broadcasters already have access) and next year the company will be upgrading its search engine. The event kicks off TwitchCon, which takes places today and tomorrow in San Francisco.