Dec 17, 2021 - By Jon Bulava

Twitch Developer Day 2021: Introducing Game Engine Plugins, EventSub WebSockets, and More

Twitch Developer Day 2021, a virtual event to celebrate the developer community and share the latest third-party developer product updates, took place recently on December 9.  The day included presentations from Twitch staff and Twitch creators to help demonstrate the newest features to incorporate into your viewer and creator experiences.  In case you missed the broadcast, we have all the details right here.

Introducing Twitch Game Engine Plugins

Every day millions of viewers connect with and support their favorite streamers across the globe with follows, subscriptions, cheers, chat, Channel Points, polls, and predictions.  While we provide many ways for developers to obtain this information, such as the Twitch API and EventSub Webhooks, we wanted to make it even easier for game developers to integrate these Twitch features into their gameplay experience.

For that reason, we are introducing native Unreal and Unity game engine plugins to make interactive viewer experiences on Twitch as simple as possible.  These plugins abstract the web technologies and interfaces typically used to receive Twitch events and enable native interactions.  With this effort, our goal is to reduce the heavy-lifting in your development process, prescribe interactions that will be meaningful to creators, and require no web backend to make it all work.

Additionally, we are providing a C++ SDK so game developers using different engines can take advantage of this functionally as well.

We are currently taking closed beta applications through this form and will be actively starting the beta program in the new year.

Introducing EventSub WebSockets

During the last Developer Day, we introduced EventSub, our transport-neutral real-time events product.  Webhooks was the only transport at launch and now we’re glad to announce WebSockets is the next transport  to be supported.  Developers made it clear that there were certain use cases where Webhooks would not work or would be difficult at best. For example, a browser application to manage Channel Points rewards or a game that triggers a boss fight when there’s a Hype Train.  Ultimately, we think adding WebSockets means that developers will build applications that power new ways for creators and viewers to strengthen their communities on Twitch.

A closed beta for EventSub WebSockets will begin in January 2022 and we want to include as many different use cases and application types as possible to ensure that what we’re building is going to meet your needs. Applications are now being accepted through this form for developers who are interested to try it out and provide feedback.

Introducing Soundtrack APIs

Last fall, we launched Soundtrack by Twitch and, in October, we released the Soundtrack web player.  Soundtrack gives creators a curated collection of rights-cleared music that integrates with streaming software to separate audio sources. This allows a broadcaster to keep their channel safe and focus on creating great content for their community.

The same day we released Soundtrack, the community requested Soundtrack APIs.  So naturally we were pleased to announce three new endpoints; Get Soundtrack Playlists, Get Soundtrack Playlist, and Get Current Track. We think these endpoints will be powerful tools for creating new interactive experiences with Soundtrack and will power applications that help Twitch music creators gain exposure as well as get matched with new fans. We look forward to experiencing what you build with these endpoints!

Moderation APIs in Open Beta

We recently released nine new API endpoints with seven new authorization scopes focused on making more moderator functionality available to third-party developers.  Moderators play a critical support role on Twitch, helping creators focus on doing what they love and keeping communities safe.  Moderation is not easy and many moderators rely on third-party tools to do their jobs, which is why we’ve been eager to provide this functionality to expand what is possible in these tools.

These new endpoints are available in the Twitch developer site documentation and listed here for convenience:

Product Lifecycle

While there are plenty of amazing new features, there are also a couple of upcoming changes that all developers should be reminded of.  During the Developer Day broadcast, we reiterated the necessary changes for Extension Policy 2.12.  This policy determines which domains can load content for an Extension, so if you have a Twitch Extension that loads assets not included in the Extension’s submission, you may need to allowlist CSP domains before the policy is enforced on January 25, 2022.  For more information about this update and to evaluate if any action is needed, please review our announcement. 

As a reminder, the Legacy Twitch API v5 is shutting down on February 28, 2022 with phased shutdown windows beginning on February 7, 2022.  If your application calls any of these endpoints, you will need to migrate before the phased shutdown windows begin.  Please refer to the original announcement and the v5 migration guide for assistance with the transition to the latest version of the Twitch API.

A Raid Relay to Highlight Community Members

To continue Developer Day beyond the keynote presentation, we wanted to highlight a few Twitch creators and provide them with early access as needed to demonstrate some of the features we announced on their own channels.  To that end, we were thrilled to work with whitep4nth3r for the moderation APIs, Lana_Lux for the Unity Twitch game engine plugin, Soaryn for EventSub websockets in Unity, and LuckyNoS7evin for polls and predictions with EventSub websockets. Below is a list of their previous broadcasts where available.

If you joined chat in any of the channels during Twitch Developer Day, we appreciate you being there and celebrating with us!  To catch all the latest Twitch third-party developer news throughout the year, make sure to follow the TwitchDev channel; our monthly update is the first Thursday of every month at 2pm EST unless otherwise noted.  Have a great new year and cheers to what’s to come in 2022!

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