All you need to know about CS:GO streaming
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Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is, without a doubt, one of the most popular competitive online shooters available on the gaming market today. Due to its good balance, easy to play – hard to master approach, and a well-developed eSport scene it is one of the big titles. If we add the numbers of concurrent players of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive often reaching 700 thousand players and more, it is natural that some of them will be interested in streaming. Especially semi-pros or CSGO pro-gamers that left the professional scene a while ago tend to be interested in CSGO streaming. Because of their high popularity and equally high skills, they have a good head start over smaller streamers.
In this article, we will take a closer look at CSGO streaming. However, we will focus more on the “how to start” aspects like what setup you will need and where to stream, rather than bathe in the skill and glory of the biggest and best channels streaming in CSGO category on Twitch or YouTube. With that being said, we won’t ignore obvious lessons and tips we can take from pros streaming CSGO. It is usually better to build on the experience (and mistakes) of others rather than to go in blind with very basic misconceptions.
What specs do you need for CSGO streaming?
One of the most common questions that many beginners that just start streaming CSGO, is what specifications you need for it. Well, the short answer is the better the PC the better will your stream behave. Although you don’t need an extremely powerful PC to run CSGO, you would do better at streaming with specs high enough to be able to comfortably run CSGO at high details with high, stable FPS. Luckily, for streaming purposes, you will really only need 60 FPS as rarely any of the streaming services allows game streaming with any higher FPS value. Some even block your streaming FPS rate to 30 when you are not a partner of that particular platform.
A lot of RAM would also help, as will have to run quite a lot of different software to achieve a comfortable CSGO streaming quality for both you and your audience. This would include streaming software like OBS, Elgato, or Lightstream, but also capture card software, multiple background process, and more.
However, one of the most important things when it comes to specs and streaming CSGO is, quite obviously, internet speed. For this, you need to have both download and upload speeds as high as possible. The high download speed will help you see the chat in real-time as well as have an enjoyable lag-free gaming experience. Upload, on the other hand, will allow you to stream without hitches, lags, and the stream itself will have a high quality of both audio and video.
How do I setup CSGO streaming?
As mentioned previously, you will need some streaming software. This will allow you to send the elements of your display to the link of the stream as live video footage. This is the bare minimum that you need. Of course, many streamers also include webcam to add a video feed of your own face (people tend to remember more than just the voice). However, a decent microphone will be much more important than webcam so if you are deciding between the two, go with the microphone.
When you have your system, software and hardware checked and ready, just push the start button and enjoy the ride 🙂
Where can I stream CSGO?
Due to the high, global popularity of CSGO as a game basically every steaming platform that allows gaming streams (hint: they all do) will gladly let you stream. Well, they will let you stream CSGO as long as your stream will be in accordance with platform rules. Each of the main, big streaming platforms has its own code of conduct, which means some things may be completely fine on one platform while they might get you banned on another. In general, though, being overtly racist, sexist, or generally very offensive will most likely get you reported and banned. Likewise, some type of content is unacceptable at any platform. This means you can go for the biggest and most established streaming platforms such as Twitch.tv or Mixer as well as more mixed platforms like YouTube. Hell, you can even go for Facebook CSGO streaming and really have a dedicated audience. There are other platforms and services that allow streaming CSGO, for example, DLive which is a streaming service built around blockchain or various local social media and streaming platforms that are available in your country only.
What is good and what is bad in CSGO streaming
The most obvious advantage of CSGO streaming is that if you manage to grow your channel enough to have a steady income, you will be playing games all day and getting paid for it! Jokes aside, streaming CSGO or any other competitive game is hard and requires you to play on top of your skill while still being communicative and funny enough for people to stay on your channel. Moreover, many streamers stop enjoying the games they play as soon as they start feeling them as their work, often playing games they do not enjoy anymore just because they are popular with their community.
However, even running a small channel focused around CSGO streaming may be advantageous to you. First of all, you will most likely learn some soft skills, especially communicative skills and that can help in almost any situation. Moreover, a small yet dedicated community will still donate to your channel, subscribe, and send you monetary gifts. Even if that won’t be enough to sustain you permanently, it’s still nice to be appreciated and get some small bonus money while doing what you would be most likely doing anyway. Hey, at least you won’t start thinking about streaming CSGO as a tedious 9-to-5 job!
Summary
In this brief CSGO streaming guide, we talked a bit about some basic notions and technical aspects that may be unclear for someone that had only a small previous contact with streaming or no contact at all and still would like to try their luck steaming in CSGO category.
