Twitch’s new Guest Star feature turns livestreams into game shows

Twitch announced the latest feature for its livestreamers, called Guest Star. This will allow streamers to invite others, both fellow content creators and audience members, into their stream as guests. They can invite up to five guests. It will roll out for a small group of users at first, and all users later this year.

Guest Star is a feature, integrated in OBS and Twitch Studio, that allows users to invite guests onto their stream. Streamers can do that now, of course, but usually require a third-party software like Discord. When a person is invited on, they are in a “backstage” area where they and the creator can set up for the event. It works on both desktop and mobile.

Be our guest

I got to see Guest Star in a short demo. From what I could tell, it looked almost like a game show or a talk show in action. Streamers can pop in and out of each others streams, as can other guests if the host streamer opens up the queue to them. If done right, it looks like a fun way to interact with other streamers and one’s own community

According to Twitch, Guest Star will also have several safety features — streamers can only invite other Twitch users as guests, for example. The host can set gates for entry, including allowing only accounts of a certain age or good standing. Hosts and moderators can also easily remove troublesome guests. During the demo, I asked whether a hosting streamer could be reported for something a guest did and was told that hosts won’t be held responsible as long as they take appropriate action to remove the problematic guest.

Given that “Just Chatting” is Twitch’s most popular category and has been for some time, this feature sounds like it will be useful for a large contingent of its users. The concept of guests on a Twitch stream isn’t a new one, but Twitch seems to finally be jumping on the bandwagon to make the experience more user-friendly.