Twitch and YouTube both give video game content creators options for streaming and sharing videos with their followers, but as a viewer, it can be difficult to find a curated stream of highlights for your favorite games. Imgur hopes to solve that with Imgur Melee, a new service designed to give viewers one place to watch highlights and make it easier for creators to build an audience.
Available today, Imgur Melee is a social network of sorts that’s split between a few different sections on your mobile device. You can search for content by game title, and after doing so, you will receive a stream of highlights from players in only the games you selected. If all you are interested in is harrowing Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice moments, you can curate your experience to fit that. A trending button on the app will also let you check out the most popular posts outside of what you are following.
Much like with standard Imgur posts and platforms such as Instagram and Twitter, you can comment, share, and like posts that appear on your feed. Keeping with the video game theme, however, Imgur is calling it “giving experience” when you like a post. You accumulate this experience across all of your posts and it will be visible on your profile so others can see how powerful you have become.
Imgur Melee isn’t just for making viewing easier, however, but also for making sharing easier. You can take images or clips directly from your phone if you are storing them locally, or import them from Twitch, YouTube, OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive, and Xbox. This way, you’ll be able to upload your videos or stream on your platform of choice while still having content ready to go on Imgur Melee. In the future, you’ll be able to direct your viewers back to your Twitch or YouTube channel, as well.
“We’re very excited about how Melee is complementary to livestreaming and have plans to integrate all the popular streaming platforms directly into it,” said Imgur founder Alan Schaaf in a statement to Digital Trends. “We love livestreaming and want Melee to be a place where streamers can share their clips and highlights in order to grow their fan base. We see platform integrations as a key part of being able to do that, and very soon, gamers who are currently streaming will be able to drive traffic directly from Melee to their livestream.”
Given Imgur’s huge popularity on sites such as Reddit, it’s easy to imagine Melee taking off and being the way to share gaming highlights. We’ll just have to wait and see if that’s the case.
