Elon Musk streams himself playing ‘Diablo IV’ to test X capacity

The broadcast on X, formerly Twitter, lasted 52 minutes, of which the first dozen were spent setting up the stream correctly, with a staffer helping Musk. X showed a maximum concurrent audience of 1,300 viewers, with 20,000 total by its end. — AP

Elon Musk livestreamed himself playing through a Diablo IV dungeon late on Oct 1 in a test of his social network’s ability to handle game streaming.

The broadcast on X, formerly Twitter, lasted 52 minutes, of which the first dozen were spent setting up the stream correctly, with a staffer helping Musk. X showed a maximum concurrent audience of 1,300 viewers, with 20,000 total by its end. Musk did not advertise the stream on his main account, setting up a new handle for the task. He played a tier 69 dungeon in the game and chose to host the stream on an account titled cyb3rgam3r420.

Musk and X chief executive officer Linda Yaccarino have sought to remodel the short-missive website into a bigger and broader service that encompasses feature-length videos and payments alongside traditional social network features. The billionaire owner said game streaming is now live on X, but complicated to set up. Viewers who want to comment on streams will need to have subscriptions, he said.

Streaming Activision Blizzard Inc’s Diablo as a test case suggests Musk is hoping to carve out some of the game-streaming market currently dominated by Amazon.com Inc’s Twitch. X now allows paying subscribers to share in the ad revenue from their posts, which may entice some Twitch streamers frustrated with the Amazon service’s monetisation policies. – Bloomberg