Elon Musk Livestreams Diablo IV on Twitter to Show Off Twitch-Like Feature

May Twitter, also referred to as X, grow to be Twitch’s subsequent massive rival?

Twitter proprietor and former CEO Elon Musk revealed a livestream of himself enjoying Blizzard’s role-playing recreation Diablo IV on the social media website early Monday to trial its new livestreaming studio function for Premium customers. 

“Examined the X online game streamer system final night time. It really works!” the Tesla CEO and richest man on the earth wrote together with a video revealed early Monday morning.

“Will attempt to full a Tier 100 Nightmare dungeon tonight reside on this platform,” Musk added. 

Over the weekend, X Media Engineering Lead Mark Kalman revealed a walkthrough video of how livestreaming by way of Twitter’s Media Studio works.

To entry the Media Studio, avid gamers should go to studio.x.com, log into their Twitter account, and duplicate their stream key to their streaming software program’s settings. Which means streamers will be capable of use OBS, an open-source streaming software program, and broadcast on to Twitter from there. Streamers also can add a chat to their broadcasts, which is able to show messages from viewers, based on one other video.

A fast take a look at of the Media Studio function signifies that it’s now reside for paying Twitter Blue customers. Twitter presently presents three U.S. areas to select from: Oregon, northern California, and northern Virginia. It additionally has 5 areas for Asia-Pacific customers, three for Europe, and one for South America.

From our take a look at, the Media Studio livestreams don’t seem anyplace in your Twitter feed after they’re over in case you don’t tweet out the hyperlink your self. The distinctive hyperlink for the stream does nonetheless work afterward, nonetheless, and the recording stays in your personal Media Studio as nicely till you select to delete it.

Kalman has not but responded to Decrypt’s request for touch upon the function.

It’s price noting that Twitter customers can already go reside by way of the X cellular app, nonetheless, or relay desktop broadcasts to Twitter by way of websites like Restream or StreamYard.

A considerable improve to Twitter’s media capabilities has lengthy been promised as part of Musk’s takeover. Plans to permit paying customers the flexibility to add movies as much as two hours in size was introduced earlier this yr, and Musk has additionally shared plans for a “paywalled video” function. Pre-recorded movies nonetheless have a most add dimension of 1GB at time of writing, nonetheless.

Whereas X Premium (Twitter Blue) patrons also can add longer movies in 1080p decision, the location seems to be subtly discouraging its customers from doing so. A discover that such decision is “not often wanted” seems when importing video content material.

That sentiment may need to vary for Twitter to compete with streaming platforms like Twitch and Kick. Twitch Companions are capable of livestream in limitless quantities at 1080p decision. And whereas Twitch Associates are restricted to a 720p decision, higher-resolution streams look considerably higher when enjoying video games with quick motion, like most shooter video games in addition to RPGs like Diablo IV.

Dwell streaming on Twitter doesn’t should be only for video video games, nonetheless. From a technical standpoint, customers will be capable of stream something that OBS can seize to Twitter by way of the Media Studio, together with full-screen webcam footage or laptop display screen captures. 

Based on Twitter’s present guidelines, it doesn’t permit “media that’s excessively gory” or for customers to “share violent or grownup content material inside reside video or in profile or header photographs.” The platform’s guidelines additionally don’t permit customers to “violate others’ mental property rights, together with copyright and trademark.” 

On this regard, it appears like Twitter’s guidelines are much like these on Twitch, the place streamers equally can not livestream violence, grownup content material, copyrighted content material, or criminality, amongst different restrictions.