The fact that Valve had registered Steam.tv as a domain was discovered last week, with the website even livestreaming The International Dota 2 tournament for a short period of time. While this led to some wild speculations on the company"s intentions in the broadcasting space, Valve later confirmed that it had been a test for something to be revealed later.
And today is that date, with Valve officially unveiling the newly updated Steam Broadcasting system, which has gone online to stream The International"s main event with a score of impressive features.
Steam Broadcasting has now been integrated with Steamworks, meaning that the stream provides useful markers for when rounds start, end, first blood, and even team fights, where spectators can jump around to any point in case they missed anything.
The newly overhauled Steam Chat has also been integrated to the Broadcasting system, where chat groups can watch the stream together. Titled Watch Parties, Valve explained the feature saying "In the past, if you wanted to watch TI with a select group of folks, there wasn’t really an ideal way to do that. Now there is."
While the new Steam Broadcasting system is restricted to watching The International for now, Valve plans to introduce Watch Party support for every game under Steam following the tournament. Moreover, the company will be releasing a new Steamworks broadcast API for Steam partners later on as well.