With people preparing to hunker down in isolation in order to avoid the spread of covid-19, it seems Discord is hoping to ease potential cabin fever by raising the limits on its Go Live game streaming feature.
In a recent blog post titled “Helping out where we can,” Discord founder Jason Citron decided to temporarily increase the number of concurrent viewers who can watch Go Live streams from 10 to 50 people. The idea is that while people are cooped up inside, being able to more easily stream and share your gameplay with others on Discord should make being cooped at home a little more tolerable.
Discord’s Go Live feature initially launched back in August and gave Discord users a simple (and free) one-touch solution for streaming games to other users on the same Discord server. And because there’s practically no delay or need to set up a dedicated channel on Twitch, YouTube, Facebook or one of the other major streaming platforms, Go Live quickly became a popular tool for sharing gameplay between friends in real-time.
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However, because Go Live wasn’t intended for mass sharing, since its launch, the total number of people that could watch a local stream at any given time was capped at 10 until Discord’s recent change.
Currently, it’s not clear how long Discord will keep the Go Live viewer limit at 50, as upping the viewer count could result in increased server costs for Discord. But with so many people turning to video games for escape and entertainment while avoiding exposure to the coronavirus, Discord upgrading the capabilities for Go Live is a nice gesture.