Going live

You stream from broadcasting software like OBS Studio using your personal ingest URL and stream key.

Note

Live streaming is open to every registered account — no approval needed. Just confirm your email, open the Studio’s Go Live page, and stream. (Video uploads are a separate, approval-gated feature — see Videos & uploads.)

If your stream won’t connect, drops, or gets stopped, see Stream troubleshooting — it covers the bandwidth test, the encoder readout, and every reason a publish can be refused.

Get your stream key

The Studio’s Go Live page shows:

• Ingest (RTMP) URL — where your encoder sends video. It’s a single fixed address; there’s no server or region to choose.
• Stream key — a private token that authorises your stream. It’s masked by default; use the eye button to reveal it and the copy button to copy it.

Your key stays the same between sessions, so you set OBS up once. Signing back in shows you the same key — you never need to reset it just to see it again. If you do need a new one, use Regenerate: the old key stops working immediately.

Danger

Treat your stream key like a password. Anyone with it can stream as you. If it leaks, regenerate it from the Go Live page.

Note

Only plain RTMP is offered today. RTMPS, SRT and other ingest protocols aren’t available to creators.

Set up OBS

1. Settings → Stream.
2. Service: Custom.
3. Server: your ingest URL.
4. Stream key: your key.
5. In Output, set the video encoder to an H.264 one (see Supported codecs), a bitrate at or under the limit shown on the Go Live page, and a keyframe interval of 2 seconds.
6. Select Start Streaming. Your channel goes live within a few seconds.

Title, category, tags & language

Set these on the Go Live page before you start:

• Title — up to 100 characters.
• Category — the game server you’re playing on.
• Tags — up to 5 short labels. Start typing and either pick an existing tag or create a new one.
• Content language — the language you actually speak on stream. It defaults to the language you’re using the site in. Viewers filter by it when browsing, so setting it honestly puts you in front of the right audience.
• Mature content — flag the stream if it isn’t suitable for everyone. See Mature content.

Note

If the platform has tag approval switched on, a brand-new tag you invent won’t appear in autocomplete or browse filters until a moderator approves it. Tags that already exist always work immediately.

You don’t have to use the form

There are two ways to start a stream:

• From the Go Live page — fill in the details, then start your encoder.
• Straight from OBS — point your encoder at the ingest URL and hit Start. Your channel goes live reusing your previous stream’s title, category, mature flag, and content language.

That’s why going live again is one click: your last setup is reused until you change it. You can change the details on the Go Live form, or from your live dashboard while you’re streaming.

Supported codecs

Your encoder must send H.264 video and AAC audio. Anything else is refused at the door — the stream will not go live.

	Accepted	Not accepted
Video	H.264 (x264, NVIDIA NVENC H.264, AMD H.264, Intel QuickSync H.264)	HEVC/H.265, AV1, VP9
Video profile	Baseline, Main, High (8-bit 4:2:0)	High 10, High 4:2:2, High 4:4:4
Audio	AAC	Opus, MP3, PCM

Caution

Selecting AV1 or HEVC in OBS is a single dropdown away, and OBS will not tell you it was refused — it reports a lost connection and keeps reconnecting. If your encoder connects and immediately drops in a loop, check your video codec first, then open the Go Live page: the reason for the last refusal is shown there.

Both AV1 and HEVC use significantly less bandwidth than H.264, so the temptation is understandable — but a live stream has to be playable in every viewer’s browser, and H.264 is the only codec every browser decodes.

Quality & bitrate

Your live stream is delivered to viewers at the quality you broadcast — there’s a single live rendition, so the resolution and bitrate viewers receive are the ones your encoder sends. (Choosing between multiple live qualities isn’t available yet.)

For a stable broadcast:

• Stream at a resolution and bitrate your upload can sustain comfortably — that’s exactly what viewers receive.
• Use a 2-second keyframe interval. Segments can only be cut on a keyframe, so a longer interval directly adds delay for your viewers.
• Stay at or under the recommended maximum bitrate shown on the Go Live page.

What happens if you go over

Bitrate is measured on a rolling average and only checked from about 30 seconds after you start publishing, so a brief spike won’t catch you out.

• Slightly over the recommended limit — a warning banner appears on your live dashboard with your current bitrate and the limit. Nothing else happens, and the warning clears itself once you drop back under.
• Well over — there’s a second, higher ceiling that isn’t published. Cross it and the warning becomes a countdown. Lower your bitrate before it runs out and nothing happens. If you don’t, your stream is stopped and a violation is recorded against your stream key.

Repeated violations can get your stream key temporarily suspended or blocked. If that happens, the Go Live page tells you — and for a suspension, when it lifts.

Note

Multiple quality options are available for on-demand videos — a past stream or upload is processed into several resolutions after the fact, so on-demand viewers can pick a quality. Live playback uses the single rendition you broadcast.

Latency

Viewers watch with low latency, but the player favours a stable picture for distant or weak connections. Expect playback to run slightly behind real time.

Ending a stream

Stop streaming in your encoder. Your channel leaves “live” and the session can become an on-demand past stream and a source for clips.

Your encoder dropping is not the same as ending a stream

If your connection drops, your channel doesn’t end straight away — you get a 5-minute grace window to reconnect and carry on the same stream. See Reconnecting after a drop.

Saving past streams

A past stream is only kept if Auto-save VODs is switched on for your channel (Account → Channel), and streams shorter than 30 seconds are never saved.

Note

Automatic saving also has a platform-wide switch. When it’s off, the Channel page greys the toggle out and tells you so — your choice is still saved and takes effect as soon as it’s switched back on.

Saved streams appear in Studio → Videos while they process. See Videos & uploads for the processing states and what you can edit afterwards.

Things the platform controls, not you

Some live features are switched on and configured centrally. You can’t enable, disable, or tune them per channel:

• Live rewind (DVR) — whether viewers can scrub back on your live stream, and how far.
• Go-live announcements — the platform may post a “now live” announcement to a community Discord when you start, with a cooldown between announcements.
• Bitrate limits — the recommended limit shown on the Go Live page, and the enforcement above it.