Twitch Squad Stream, a new way to do multi-person streams, launched today for Twitch Partners. Squad Stream lets up to four people broadcast together in split-screen. Viewers are able to choose which video stream to highlight whenever they want.
Twitch announced the release of Squad Stream in a new blog post on their site, which detailed the new additions. The hands-on collaboration allows streamers to team up and stream together easily. Unlike similar workarounds in the past, Twitch Squad Stream puts every video stream together in one place and allows viewers to jump back and forth between streamers.
Stream hosting and Raids continue to present other collaborative uses of Twitch, but Squad Stream expands that even further. Creators are able to start or join Squad Streams right from their dashboard and stream as they would normally. Twitch Partners are able to use Squad Stream now, with non-Partners being added at a later date.
Twitch sees Squad Streams as a great way for viewers to get more angles on the action. Four streamers can be playing Fortnite or the like together, and viewers can jump between different streams to catch every moment of action. The company also highlighted speedrunning head-to-head races as a great use for the new tool.
Twitch Squad Stream was announced at TwitchCon 2018 alongside Twitch Sings. At the time, Twitch said it would roll out to a small set of streamers that year. The wider release of Squad Streams didn’t have a firm date besides sometime this year. Twitch Sings, which is being developed with Harmonix, is a bespoke karaoke game for Twitch. It is expected later this year.
New moderation tools, homepage updates, a highlight editor, and VIP badges were also announced at TwitchCon 2018. Some moderation tools and the highlight editor have been released, with other features still rolling out. Twitch Squad Stream can be found in its own tag on Twitch.
