Good news, competitive gamers and eSports enthusiasts!
Twitch is on the move to make the platform a better home for eSports live broadcasts.
The Amazon-owned live streaming platform recently introduced a suite of competition tools to benefit eSports tournament organizers, players, and fans that goes by the name “Twitch Versus.”
New initiative
Twitch is focused on expanding its commitment towards eSports, and now they want to help tournament organizers by providing improved tools to manage their events better.
It is designed to enable organizers on the platform to better create, manage, and stream competitions with their communities in an integrated environment.
Twitch further explained the concept behind Versus in an official blog post:
“Introducing Versus by Twitch (Beta), an end-to-end suite of competition tools for organizers, players, and viewers from all different backgrounds and experience levels. Competition organizers can quickly and easily create, manage, and stream competitions with their communities of players and viewers – all integrated on Twitch.”
The closed beta version of these tools was announced to launch beginning September 9.
Only select organizers with the likes of Twitch Rivals, college eSports leagues, game developers, and content creators partook in trying out the beta.
“Our goal is to get as many of you access as quickly as we can but over the coming months our focus will be on making sure the competition experience is capable of handling competitions, both complex and casual, as well as listening to and incorporating feedback from our beta community.”
If you want to take a shot at organizing eSports competitions on Twitch, you might have to sign up for a waiting list to access the feature’s beta version.
eSports-focused
Versus is described as a “end-to-end suite” of tools to better create and manage competitions that are meant to be streamed.
This new feature comes shortly after Twitch introduced an eSports directory back in April, where viewers can watch live events, catch up on past matches, and discover pro player’s channels.
The directory is an answered prayer for viewers who aren’t interested in browsing personality-driven content categories, just pure eSports.
Twitch maintains its goal to make eSports broadcasts “more intuitive and accessible” to many, as viewers flock in record-breaking numbers to watch global live competitive eSports competitions on the platform.
It remains unclear for how long will the closed beta of Versus run on the platform.
The said set of tools are likely to work the same way Twitch Rivals events do, where events can be created with a name, description, date, game format, official rules and regulations.
Versus will be a great feature to add on Twitch, since anyone can eventually organize eSports-exclusive events in a seamless way that will connect directly to the platform.
This will now get rid of the need for organizers to use a third-party site to better manage their tournaments.
Read the full blog post on Versus by Twitch and the future of eSports on the platform here.
