Steam Broadcasting: Watch out, Twitch — Valve’s getting into livestreaming

Twitch is the biggest name in video game livestreaming, but it’s about to get some competition from the biggest name in PC gaming.

Valve, the creator of the seminal Half-Life shooter franchise and the Steam digital-distribution platform, introduced Steam Broadcasting today. When playing a game on the network, you can now livestream gameplay video to Web as well as the Steam client, and others can now watch you play as well. The service is in a testing phase, but it’s open to anyone willing to opt into Steam’s latest beta release.