Streamers are the next big demographic tech companies are looking to chase. There have been too many announcements--Corsair buying Elgato, Logitech acquiring Blue Microphones, Razer introducing the Ifrit headset--in recent months to leave doubt about that. Today, the Streamlabs App Store opened up today, offering more evidence for just how lucrative it expects the streaming market to be.
Streamlabs offers a platform where streamers can set up custom alerts, sell their own merchandise and find a chatbot to at least attempt to manage the nigh-unmanageable entity known as Twitch chat. The company has already expanded that platform in recent months with the debut of Streamlabs OBS, which makes it easier for people to stream, as well as a partnership with Intel revolving around stream-ready PCs.
Now Streamlabs has revealed a new app store where streamers can find over a dozen apps "designed to help live streamers grow their channel." The apps range from music streaming tools and polling utilities to custom widgets and software that makes it easier to simultaneously stream to multiple platforms.
Streamlabs also established a $1 million developer fund to encourage devs to make software compatible with the Streamlabs OBS streaming app to put in the new app store. Right now the app store is invite-only, unlike the rest of Streamlabs' offerings, but it'll open up to more people in the future. The company said it went invite-only to start because it wants "to give the maximum amount of support to each developer, including custom API work if that is what’s needed to build a killer app."
People invited to use the app store will also be given a $15 credit to encourage them to check out the new software. More apps are expected to debut in late November, and with $1 million to hand out to additional developers, odds are good that more will follow in the coming months. Although that will of course depend on what kind of apps Streamlabs is looking for and what the approval process will look like.
Regardless, Streamlabs is making clear its belief that streamers will be a lucrative enough market to justify these expansions to its platform. While other companies are focused on hardware, it seems this one is determined to become the de facto software provider for everyone who wants their stream to stand out from the many, many others. Welcome to the fight to arm everyone in their battle for stardom.
