Facebook is hungry for some of the lucrative game streaming audience captured by Twitch and YouTube, and today the company announced a new software development kit designed to make it even easier to stream PC games live on the social network. The news, announced this morning in conjunction with the first day of the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, builds on previous Facebook Live developments, like live-streaming mobile Instant Games announced in December of last year, and a new partnership program to help better cater to professional streamers and build out monetization efforts launched back in January.
Facebook now lets you stream PC games directly through its Live platform
The company is trying to take on Twitch and YouTube in the game streaming space
The company is trying to take on Twitch and YouTube in the game streaming space
Image: Facebook
is a Senior Producer on Decoder. Previously, he reported on the technology and gaming industries for more than a decade.
Since 2016, Facebook has allowed Blizzard games, most notably Overwatch, to stream direct through its Live platform. The company built on that feature to develop its new Games SDK for PC, which will make it easy for any game developer to allow Facebook Live streaming on the software side at the push of a button. That way, streamers won’t need any external hardware or third-party software to get live streams up and running on Facebook. To incentivize viewers to stick around on Facebook and watch streams there instead of on Twitch, the company is also launching a rewards system developers can use to grant in-game perks and other benefits to people who view streams on Live.
Of course, members of the dedicated gaming community who spend hours a day watching streamers on Twitch or consuming highlight and Let’s Play videos on YouTube already have investments in those competing platforms. Those investments can be monetary, through paid subscriptions to popular streamers, or social, by being steeped in those platforms’ respective cultures. While Facebook seems to recognize that it’s not a destination for highly engaged live video viewing, the company has spent years trying to build out its Live platform to be as versatile and appealing as possible. So it makes sense Facebook would continue on this path with the hope that among its giant multibillion-person audience are a sizable chunk of gamers who may be willing to ditch Twitch and YouTube.
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