Twitch has launched its own broadcasting software

(Image credit: Twitch)

Twitch has become the digital watering hole of many gamers' lives, a place where they gather and watch streamers chat and play through their favorite games. Watching Twitch is easy—just open a stream and you're good to go—but for budding content creators who don't know much about how to stream on Twitch, the process is a bit more involved.

Today, Twitch launched Twitch Studio, a first-party broadcasting software that should make starting your streaming career a bit easier. 

Until now, streamers big and small have relied on third-party broadcasting software like OBS in order to mash together the outputs of your game, camera, and microphone into what's seen and heard by the viewer. Twitch Studio aims to cut OBS and other software out of the equation, simplifying the process and hopefully making it easier to start your streaming career.

"We’ve been listening to our users give us feedback, talk about their experience, how they started streaming, how they progress," Twitch director of product management Cheng Cheng told the Verge. “And one really consistent pain point was that multiplayer entertainment is really fun, it’s really engaging, but the bar to really get started is quite high."

Twitch Studio first offers guided setup to help first-timers configure their mic and webcam. It then gives the user some basic templates to customize the look of their stream, as well as some community-building tools like an activity feed and alerts for new followers. 

Twitch Studio is available now by way of a closed beta with limited features, and currently only supports Windows 7 or newer. You can read more about the software on the Twitch blog, or sign up for the closed beta here.

Thanks, The Verge.

Bo Moore

As the former head of PC Gamer's hardware coverage, Bo was in charge of helping readers better understand and use PC hardware. He also headed up the buying guides, picking the best peripherals and components to spend your hard-earned money on. He can usually be found playing Overwatch, Apex Legends, or more likely, with his cats. He is now IGN's resident tech editor and PC hardware expert.