A game streaming platform is an app or website on which people watch other people play video games live, and follow esports tournaments. The person playing is called a streamer. The streamer's screen and voice, and often their face, are sent live to everyone watching. Viewers comment in a chat beside the video and can pay the streamer with tips or virtual gifts. In India, these platforms are built mainly for viewers on phones.
Why watch someone else play? For the same reasons that people watch cricket. A skilled player is exciting to watch. A funny streamer is entertaining. And viewers learn tricks that they can use in their own games. In India, most viewers watch streams of free-to-play mobile games, such as battle royale games in which a hundred players fight until one is left.
Here is a typical case. A college student in Shillong streams a battle royale game from his phone every evening. He uses the platform's own app, which records his phone screen and his voice and sends them live. Around 2,000 people watch him. When he wins a match, viewers send gifts bought with coins, a virtual currency. The platform converts his share of the gifts into rupees and pays him every month. Brands also pay popular streamers to mention a product during a stream.
The platforms also show esports tournaments. These are organised competitions in which teams play against each other for prize money, watched live by large audiences. A tournament final may have several lakh viewers at once, with commentators, like a cricket match. India's online gaming law of 2025 supports esports as a recognised sport.
The same law banned real-money gaming apps, in which players pay money to enter contests. This matters to game streaming platforms, because some of them earned from advertising those apps, or ran paid contests themselves. Now they earn mainly from gifts, ads and sponsors.
To carry live video to thousands of phones, the platform uses a content delivery network (CDN). The delay must be short, so that the streamer can reply to comments while the viewers still remember them. Some streamers play console and PC games instead of mobile games, and stream from a computer.
How is it different from a live streaming app with virtual gifts? Both pay hosts through gifts. On a game streaming platform, the game is the main attraction. On a gifting app, the host's company is the main attraction.