Over the past year, Facebook has committed itself to livestreaming, enticing viewers with in-game rewards and making deeper analytics available to content creators. Placing it on equal footing with competitors, Streamlabs has announced that Facebook Gaming is now completely integrated into its OBS software.
With access to Facebook’s developer APIs, Streamlabs has ensured a more streamlined experience when getting ready to go live. Streamers will now have access to a “suite of different supported features,” with many more in planning.
Embedded Chat is perhaps the most important addition, providing a widget that adds an overlay to the stream. This benefits both streams that are live and past broadcasts, as viewers will be able to witness the context of every interaction. There have been a number of improvements made to scheduling streams. Not only will a post notify followers when a stream is scheduled to take place, a new “auto-fill” feature will use the post to update the title and description upon going live.
One of Facebook Gamings more divisive limitations is that streamers can only remain live for up to four hours per session. Streamlabs OBS will now notify the streamer when they are approaching this boundary so that they can better manage their content.
“In 2018, we saw a 91% increase in content creators using Streamlabs OBS (SLOBS) on Facebook,” explains Streamlabs CEO Ali Moiz. “We hope that this full Facebook Gaming integration will open the doors for thousands more to enter the market and make money doing what they love.”
There are some limitations with Facebook Gaming’s integration during these early stages. Firstly, Alert Support for follows, likes and shares is not yet support, but is currently in the works. Secondly, integration is only supported by Facebook Pages and not individual profiles. Users will be prompted to create a Facebook Page upon using Streamlabs OBS.