I know what you’re thinking… “Mark, didn’t you say guest chat was terrible and never coming back?”

Yes I did, person reading this blog post. Since removing guest chat almost four years ago, a lot of you have expressed your dislike of its removal. Through many live streams and open discussions, we came to a middle ground: Guest chat can come back, but with more limitations and only available to those on the mobile app.

Fast forward to today and you’ll see some of those decisions have been modified. Because the new chat server software and chat clients are nowhere near completion, I decided to bring back the Classic Guest Chat until the new system has been completed. That means guest chat can be enabled by broadcasters in their channels and anybody can chat, no mobile app needed. Ironically the Classic Guest Chat isn’t available in the current Android app. So if you want to chat as a guest, you’ll need to do it from a browser.

But not so fast, it’s called Classic Guest Chat but some things have been changed. There are no longer infinite guest names. They are now tied to your IP address. VPNs are of course not allowed (we didn’t have a VPN filtering system in place during the original guest chat days.) And if you’re a broadcaster, you are still responsible for moderating those that chat as guests. If at any time we feel a broadcaster is not correctly moderating their guest chat, we will revoke their guest chat from their channel. Though, admittedly I don’t see that happening unless in extreme scenarios.

So there you have it, Classic Guest Chat is back on Vaughn Live (sorry Breakers.TV, no guest chat for you.) It’s off by default in all channels. Have fun and say something nice!

-Mark

Added a new stream tool: Chat Overlay

Add your live chat to your stream. This can be done using a browser source within OBS Studio, XSplit, or any other encoding software that supports displaying web pages.

This can be found under Channel Settings -> Chat Overlay
https://vaughn.live/settings/chat_overlay

-Mark

If you are using the Vaughn Live Android app, make sure to update to the latest version. There is a critical chat bug fix in the recent update.

And, if you’re using the Breakers.TV Android app and wondering where the updates are, it will be brought up to date once we’ve reached version 1.2 on the main branch. At that point both Vaughn Live and Breakers.TV Android apps will match in bug fixes and features.

Before anybody asks, yes there will be an iOS app. No, I don’t know when it will be ready lol.

-Mark

After several years of chasing the cause of the random buffering that would sometimes happen after watching a stream for a few minutes, we have finally resolved it! There is nothing more frustrating than watching a live stream and it buffering right when something happens. As of yesterday, this issue is no more. With the exception of rare ingest issues, scheduled automated restarts (at 5am central,) and of course broadcaster issues. If a stream is buffering, there’s a good chance it’s the person broadcasting causing it. Whether it be their encoder settings, their computer hardware, or them having internet issues.

This is a big step for us and a huge relief. Now we can better focus our attention other issues and features.

-Mark