How to livestream your game during Steam Next Fest

During Next Fest, thousands of demos compete for the same player, and most store pages look alike: a capsule, a trailer on loop, a Download Demo button. A page with a live stream is different. The player who lands on it sees the game being played right now, sees a developer behind it, and can ask in chat whether there is co-op before deciding to download.

That is the whole case for streaming. It is optional, it costs nothing, and Valve gives streams of participating games their own section of the fest. It is also fiddly to set up, and Valve's own tip is to expect a few attempts and to test well before the week. This guide is the setup, in the order Valve's documentation gives it, plus the one mistake that keeps most demo streams off the store page.

Steam's store-page streaming runs from an ordinary Steam account, and that account has to meet three conditions:

• It is not a limited account. A limited account, one that has not spent at least $5 USD on Steam, cannot create an RTMP token.
• It can play the game. It owns it, or it is a member of your Steamworks partner group with access, or it holds a release override for an unreleased game.
• It has broadcast permission for your game, which you grant through a broadcast event (below) or the store page's Special Settings.

Adult Only games cannot be streamed to the store. Mature-rated games can.

A Next Fest demo is its own app with its own App ID. Valve's documentation is explicit that a stream of the demo's App ID does not show on the base game's store page, which is the page players see during the fest. So:

• Create the token against the base game's App ID, never the demo's, DLC's or soundtrack's.
• Play the demo on a different Steam account from the one broadcasting. Playing from the broadcasting account's library overrides the App ID you configured, and the stream lands on the demo instead.
• Use OBS or another RTMP tool. Steam's built-in client broadcasting cannot stream a demo to the store.

1. Create an RTMP token. On the streaming account, open steamcommunity.com/broadcast/upload and press Create RTMP Token. Steam picks the upload server nearest you. Enter the base game's App ID. Set the permission to Friends Only while you test.
2. Put it into OBS. In OBS, open Settings, Stream, choose Custom, and paste the Upload Server URL as the server and the token as the stream key. Treat the token like a password; you can invalidate it and make a new one on the same page.
3. Set the keyframe interval to 2. In Settings, Output, switch Output Mode to Advanced and set Keyframe Interval to 2 on the Streaming tab. Valve's documentation says that without it the stream will fail to start.
4. Match the encoding. Valve's specification is below.
5. Test. Start streaming in OBS, then open Your Broadcast URL on the upload page to check the picture arrives. A Friends Only stream never shows on the store page, so this test is private.
6. Create the broadcast event. In Steamworks, on the base game's landing page, open Post/Manage Events & Announcements, create a new event of the Live-Stream/Broadcast type, turn the broadcast on in its Broadcasting tab, and add the streaming account. The account that sets up the event and the streaming account must be Steam friends. Set the start and end times, then publish.
7. Go public. Switch the token's permission to Public and start streaming a few minutes before the event. A stream can take up to five minutes to appear on the store page, and the first viewers take the longest to connect.

If the stream never appears, the App ID is the usual cause. Correct it, regenerate the token, and update OBS.

Valve's livestreaming FAQ is more permissive than most developers assume:

• Pre-recorded video is allowed. Valve's answer is an unqualified yes, and it suggests showing the team, the studio or a story. A replay must say on screen, with an overlay or in the title, that it is not live.
• Stream as long as you like. Partners have run continuous streams for a couple of days. Steam does not re-broadcast for you, so a loop needs your machine, or a scheduling service, to keep sending.
• Stream elsewhere at the same time. Steam streams do not have to be exclusive; streaming to Twitch or YouTube in parallel is fine.
• Steam does not save streams. Record locally if you want the footage for clips afterwards.
• Ads in the feed are allowed and strongly discouraged.
• A stream can keep running for up to 24 hours past the event's end time.

• The demo, played well, with a developer at the mic. The first minutes a new player will see, played by someone who knows them, answering chat. Valve's tips are to turn on broadcast chat by default so players know you are there, to ask the audience questions, and to show your webcam.
• A labelled loop while you sleep. The fest runs across every time zone. A recorded run of the demo, marked as a replay, keeps the page alive overnight.
• The parts the demo does not show. A short segment on what the full game adds gives a player who finished the demo a reason to wishlist.

What not to do: stream a build that is not the demo players can download. The promise of a store-page stream is that what they see is what they get.

The obvious reading is that streaming is for studios with a community manager. The cost is mostly the setup, though, and the setup is a one-time hour. After that, a labelled loop costs a spare machine and an internet connection, and a live hour a day costs an hour a day.

Where it breaks: a stream with nobody in it does nothing a trailer does not, and a live stream from someone who would rather be fixing bugs reads that way on camera. If the week is going to be spent patching crashes, a well-labelled loop of the demo and a developer answering the forum beats a tired developer streaming.

• Two weeks out: streaming account set up, non-limited, owning the game; RTMP token created against the base game's App ID.
• Ten days out: a Friends Only test stream checked from Your Broadcast URL.
• One week out: broadcast event created and published, streaming account added and friends with the account that made it.
• Three days out: a Public test stream checked on the store page from a logged-out browser or another account.
• Fest day: start streaming a few minutes before the event's start, with chat moderators named.

Flockbay is a free AI game builder on the official Godot engine. Its Video studio cuts trailers, devlogs and shorts from your real gameplay, which make good labelled loops and creator clips for the week, and its playtest links put the demo in front of testers before you go live in front of strangers. Both are free in beta until 1 December 2026. The stream itself runs from your own Steam account and your own broadcasting tool.