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Valve launches, then shutters, Steam.TV as a Twitch competitor

SteamTV launches then goes offline

Earlier today, Valve quietly rolled out a new streaming service, Steam.TV. The service was billed as a competitor to streaming giants like Twitch and YouTube Gaming. But just as quickly as it appeared and was reported by various sites, it disappeared. This meant that details for how the service would operate are extremely scarce.

For the short time time the service was live, users and journalists were able to glean some details though. Users crawling the site code found that the SSL certificate for the site was registered alongside steamcommunity.com. That’s Valve’s social hub by the way, which means this site would be a direct addon to the social services offered through Steam, not paired with the storefront.

It was also noted by observant users that the on-site chat function, while it shared some elements with Steam’s community functions, it appeared vastly superior though in terms of usability. In that respect, it more closely resembled Discord as a chat platform.

As far as content goes, before the site was taken offline, Dota 2 was the primary broadcast on the platform. But livestream by users were disabled, so you were restricted to watching during this time. CNET reported that you could log into your Steam account and access your friends list and groups. You could also watch the Dota 2 stream with friends, as well as participate in chat.

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Although given the glut of toxicity and garbage on both the social and store elements of Valve’s services, it would remain to be seen how the company would handle the inevitable trash that would flood the platform.

Whatever happens with Steam.TV, it’s clear that Valve is making some new moves in the gaming space, and it will be interesting to see where they go from here.

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