Stadia launches ‘Party Stream’ to let you livestream gameplay to your closest friends

Stadia has had plenty of innovative livestreaming methods for quite some time now, like sharing live gameplay directly to the largest video platform for sharing in the world – YouTube. This is possible because Google owns both, and the seamless integration is a magical thing. However, being able to share what you’re playing with just a select few people is becoming more popular with tools like Discord as of late.

Today on Twitter, Stadia announced that it would begin allowing you to livestream to a party of friends for a more cozy experience. As reported by XDA Developers who shared this screenshot of the feature in action, up to 10 people can join a party stream to check out the gameplay action and participate in voice and text chat with you as you host!

In order to start a party stream, just press the Stadia button on your controller (or press Shift + Tab on your keyboard) create or join a party and launch a game. Then, go to the ‘Your party’ screen in the menu for the overlay and select the monitor icon to begin livestreaming to your posse.

Additionally, new options for swapping between games and even devices in the midst of a livestream without needing to restart your stream are being introduced. First of all, let me just say that this is super cool and kind of an obvious addition that I haven’t seen anyone else introduce to date. Upon swapping to your phone from your desktop or jumping between titles from your library, you’ll be prompted to “resume livestream”

I really love these new additions to Stadia, and I believe they will make livestreaming more appealing for gamers. In its fight against Twitch, YouTube can use all the help it can get. After buying several big streamers off of Amazon’s hands, I still see much higher numbers for viewers per stream on Twitch than YouTube. Seeing this shift would be a welcome sight, since I do everything else on YouTube.