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Valve prematurely launched a new streaming platform that is a clear bid to compete with popular streaming platforms already in place like Twitch.

The new platform, appropriately called “Steam.tv,” was published yesterday ahead of their planned reveal while the company did internal testing – whenever that reveal was planned. The streaming portal has since been removed from public view.

At the time of writing, Steam.tv was naturally only showing Valve’s own game, DoTA 2, and its annual e-sports championship, The International.

As the interface is tied to Valve, it has Steam Chat functionality, tabbed chat windows, and the option to invite friends to watch streams together. There also appeared to be in-browser voice chat support.

Valve has long since enabled users to stream their games through the main Steam client, however this was only available via the app and users connected to your Steam account. This is obviously a bold step into positioning Steam into a direct competitor to Twitch.