What is Stream Sniping and what can you do about it?

Whether you’re on a PC or current-gen console like the PS5 or Xbox Series X, the ability to stream your gameplay to an audience of thousands is at your fingertips. Streamers have become some of the biggest stars in the world, accumulating hundreds of thousands of viewers every month by playing games. While a lot of streamers are very skilled at the games they play, most are just average people who are just entertaining to watch and fun to be around. However, streamers being so popular does have a downside.

Stream sniping is a term for people who like to intentionally seek out streamers while they’re playing multiplayer games and ruin their fun. They can throw the game if they make it onto their team, or go out of their way to ruin the streamer’s game through other means. Because stream snipers have access to what the streamer is doing by watching their stream, there isn’t a lot the streamer can do. If you find yourself becoming the victim of stream sniping, these are your best tools to fight back.

What is stream sniping?

How do you snipe a stream?

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If you’ve been playing PC games online for a while then you know there are a lot of trolls and horrible individuals out there that like to spoil your fun. These folks love to grief and cause mischief that might bring them pleasure but generally ruin it for everyone else. Sadly, with the rise of streaming popularity, these trolls have found a new way to get their kicks – stream sniping.

Put in basic terms, stream sniping is the act of using your stream against you. If you’re playing any sort of online multiplayer game then you’re open to being the victim of stream sniping. This is particularly common in competitive games where knowing an enemy’s location can make the difference between winning or losing a match.

Did you ever play a split-screen game with a friend or loved one and take a cheeky look to see where they were to give you the edge? The flick of an eye being enough to let you win the game is sorely tempting. Well, with streaming you’re basically opening yourself up to anyone doing that to you from anywhere in the world.

All someone needs to do is open up your chosen streaming platform and click on your live stream to see what you’re up to. Chances are, if you’re using standard settings, then they’ve almost got a real-time feed of where you are and what you’re up to. If you open up the map at any point or sit still too long in a particular spot then it’s easy to find you and beat you.

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What can you do about stream sniping?

Ways to protect your stream

There are a few things you can do to mitigate some of the issues of stream sniping.

Many popular games have dedicated settings aimed at streamers. These sometimes include things like streamer mode for in-game music (to avoid copyright strikes) but also settings that will hide the name of the server you’re on, allow you to conceal or change your in-game handle, and more. Rainbow Six Siege, for example, has several tools for combating streaming sniping. This includes various settings to prevent snipers from queuing into a game with you by hiding your region and latency and settings for randomly delaying your match matching when you click to join a game so it’s harder to end up in the same lobby.

Other settings include giving streamers the ability to hide names, clearance levels, and avatars too, making it harder to find you. These settings alone don’t necessarily fix the issue though. They help but they’re not foolproof. If you’re in an easily identifiable place, then you’re still easy to find and kill, troll, or whatever else the stream sniper is planning.

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Delay your stream

Stay ahead of the curve

Tarn Nguyen / Unsplash / Pocket-lint

One thing you can do to combat stream sniping is to add a delay to your stream. Ideally, you want to be able to engage with your audience in real-time, responding to comments as they happen in chat, but this can be problematic if you’re opening yourself up to stream snipers. Of course, if you’re playing a competitive game and focussing hard on the game then you might not be responding to chat as often as you could anyway, so adding a delay might not matter.

You can easily add a stream delay in OBS, Streamlabs, and XSplit.

For example, in OBS follow these steps:

• Click on the settings tab
• Navigate to advanced
• Look for the setting marked stream delay and click enable
• Add a duration that you want to be added to the stream and experiment to see what works.

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What else can you do about stream snipers?

Are there any other solutions?

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If you have a problem with regular stream snipers and you know who they are, then there may be other solutions you can take advantage of.

Some games allow users to report other players for toxic behavior. This includes reporting players for stream sniping, which let’s face it, is another form of cheating anyway. You can also turn to your chosen streaming platform for help. Twitch, for example, has Gaming Content Guidelines which players and Twitch users need to be aware of. Twitch’s guidelines include rules against stream sniping: “Any activity, such as cheating, hacking, botting, or tampering, that gives the account owner an unfair advantage in an online multiplayer game, is prohibited. This also includes exploiting another broadcaster’s live broadcast in order to harass them in-game, such as stream sniping.”

So if you know someone is stream-sniping you, report them.

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