Twitch.tv is becoming more and more like regular television

Gameplay streaming service Twitch has announced a new feature which brings it closer to broadcast TV. Twitch users will be able to promote streams from other users during their downtime. They will essentially be able to host another user’s gameplay stream even when they’ve stopped broadcasting themselves. It’s like embedding somebody else’s video on your website.

Any viewers who are in your channel while you’re playing a hosted stream will be attributed to that stream, and will be given the option to subscribe to it from your page. Your stream will not be listed in the active channel directory while it’s playing a hosted stream, either. The original broadcaster will get the views, follows, and (if signed up for the program) ad impressions during Host Mode.

The service believes that this feature is beneficial for both. The host is able to keep viewers engaged to their channel even when they’re offline and they can use the feature to point out interesting streams or promote streams from friends or family.

This seems to open up interesting cross-promotional possibilities: If you’re done streaming development of your game, you could turn your channel over to other games’ devs at off-hours. It also seems likely that popular streamers may open up opportunities to get your content into their channels.

Channels using Host Mode won’t appear in Twitch’s live directory, meaning viewers won’t be able to find the channel until the mode is turned off. Host Mode is only available on the Twitch website for now, with mobile support yet to be announced. On other platforms, the host channel will appear offline, but chat will continue to work.

“At our core, Twitch is a live video destination, so we’re very interested in increasing the social connectivity between users,” said Yoh Suzuki, senior product engineer at Twitch. “We want to help our community discover new broadcasters and give users new and better ways of communicating with each other. Host Mode is a significant step in this direction with other new social features just around the corner.” Read more about the story here.

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