Discord, a popular voice chat app among gamers, will soon be adding a new feature that will allow users to stream gameplay for their friends to watch. This feature will be more limited than gaming streaming services such as Twitch, as users will only be able to stream their gameplay for up to 10 friends over a voice channel. Officially called the “Go Live” feature, Discord plans to launch it for users on August 15.
Go Live is only available for the desktop version of Discord for PC users. As such, users can only stream PC games. Rather than aim to build a large viewing audience like Twitch streamers may aspire to do, Go Live is meant to replicate the experience of physically playing video games together with friends. It’s an extension of Discord’s pre-existing screen sharing feature, which has been available since 2017 and allows users to share what they’re looking at on their own computer screens with their friends. Unlike screen sharing, however, Go Live requires Discord’s game detection function, which already broadcasts what users are playing to their friends, to recognize that the user is playing a game before it will activate.
Nitro subscribers—a $10 per month subscription service that grants Discord users access to a library of PC games—will enjoy a few bonus features with Go Live. They’ll be able to stream up to 4k and 60 FPS. Early reports have said Go Live has low latency for everyone who uses it—Nitro or not—and there’s no limit to how many people in one server or one voice channel can go live at the same time. Additionally, admins can also choose to disable Go Live in their servers.
Though only PC users can stream on Go Live, Mac and Linux users can still watch streams from their browsers. Discord also hopes to allow mobile users to watch streams at some point in the future.