Updates for Your Live Channel During Extension Review
Hey Extension developers! We have some good news. One of the most common points of feedback you have provided is the challenge of keeping your review channel live while waiting for your Extension review to be completed. So today we have made changes to improve this experience. Our review team has implemented a new process for requesting your availability if your channel is not live at the time of review.
Review Channel Requirements
There are many valuable reasons to build an Extension and our review team sees all of them. Getting to the review process for Extension developers is worth celebrating – it takes a lot of work to get there, especially if they’re built to work with live gameplay or require interaction with a backend system to push changes. In these specific situations, our review team needs to see your Extension in action which means your review channel needs to be live to see the functionality in real time. This is to verify that everything is working smoothly and as intended. Many Extensions won’t need a live review channel to perform the review. Extensions that allow the broadcaster to successfully configure the Extension with no use of an external application or game data connection are examples of this. Panel-only Extensions also do not require a live review channel.
We heard in your feedback that maintaining a live review channel until the completion of your review can be difficult to do and that’s why we are implementing a new process and updating our documentation. However, if you have found a solution that allows your stream to stay live indefinitely until the review is complete without difficulty on your end, please continue to do so! This keeps the review process quick for all the parties involved.
How It Works
Our review team may determine that they need your review channel to be live in order to complete the review. If so, they will send you an email requesting your availability if your Extension is not live at the time of review. Please fill out the form and our team will reply with a time based on the availability you provided. It’s that simple!
However, this isn’t the only option. If you are available to keep your stream live for hours that are within 9AM - 5PM Pacific Time (PT), please make note of that in the Walkthrough Guide and Change Log section of your Extension review submission. Our review team can attempt to review during those times before even needing to reach out to you! If we have any difficulty seeing your live stream, we may reach out with the review form.
Other Important Walkthrough Guide and Change Log Tips
Before you submit your Extension review, please consider what the Walkthrough Guide is going to look like for our review team. Walkthrough guides can be links to video walkthroughs or simple numbered instructions. Our review team appreciates these guides. Remember, the walkthrough guide is only visible to the review team. Make sure your Extension is easy to use for broadcasters that do not have access to this added information!
When inputting your review channel, please make sure it is the channel you intended to be live and that you are only including the URL. Our tools turn this text into a hyperlink, so the link will break with any additional text.
Continue to Give Us Feedback
We want to make the review process easier for our developers and reviewers. Friction on either side makes the review process difficult as a whole. Our review team is always looking for ways to improve the process, which is why you receive a survey after your review has been completed. Please provide your feedback via this survey so the review team can hear your voice!
We have updated the Extension documentation and the Developer Console to reflect these changes. Thank you for your feedback!