Twitch Copies YouTube, Gives Viewers Real-Life Window Of Streamers

As a predominantly live-streaming service for gamers to share their gaming activities with fans, Twitch has always been quite focused with regards to its content. Now, it wants to change things up thanks to the addition of an IRL feature. It’s basically a window that offers viewers a glimpse into the everyday life of the streamers that they follow.

According to Twitch CEO Emmett Shear, the implementation of the new service is a response to the feedback that they have been getting from the community, USA Today reports. It would seem that both the streamers and the viewers wanted the chance to be more involved with one another.

"While gaming is their core identity, what we’ve heard repeatedly from them is that they are interested in sharing their everyday lives, thoughts, and opinions with their communities," Shear explained.

This is where the IRL feature comes in. While the regular Twitch streaming service is dedicated solely to video games and events related to video games, IRL will be a way for the streamers and the viewers to interact. It’s where the content creators can show off their rigs, their homes, their daily activities, and other hobbies that might not be remotely connected to gaming.

YouTube actually released a similar feature for its content creators several months ago, and it seems that Twitch thought it was a good enough idea to emulate. Along with the IRL feature, it would seem that Twitch will also be launching a mobile streaming app so that content creators can directly take advantage of both additions.

On that note, this isn’t exactly the first foray by Twitch into territory that’s not solely focused on sharing gaming sessions, CNET reports. Last time, the streaming platform also released what’s called Twitch Creative, which is basically a service for creating how-to videos related to cosplay.