PlayBroadcast Dev Update #1: A New Home for Gamers Begins

Hello 👋. My name is Joshua, or jman2o2. PlayBroadcast has been a true passion project of mine for the past six months, sparked by the growing frustration I’ve seen among creators on other platforms — frustration over censorship, cancellations, and blacklisting for what often seem like minor infractions.

Don’t get me wrong, moderation is important on any platform. But sensible moderation feels like it's been lost. Even as some platforms walk back their bans and policies, the trust between them and their creators has already been broken. More and more creators are now spreading their content across multiple platforms, and I believe that loss of trust is a big part of why.

PlayBroadcast isn’t just another platform — it’s a mission. We’re here to give gamers a place to stream without the fear of overreaching moderation. We’re about bringing streaming back to what it was meant to be: gaming-focused.

I remember when a new game would drop — if I wasn’t sure it was worth it, I’d jump online, find a streamer, chat, get real feedback, and feel that instant connection over the thing we all love: gaming. That spirit feels lost today. Even though there are still thousands of gaming streamers, the focus has drifted. PlayBroadcast is about reclaiming that.

A place where moderation is fair, gaming is front and center, and creators can just be themselves — without fear, without compromise.

So, why me? Why would I be able to build something streamers can truly call home? Because this isn’t my first time building real software. I’ve spent nearly seven years as a developer, and while I won’t bore you with a résumé, I’ll say this: PlayBroadcast isn’t some rushed, vibe-coded project full of bugs. It’s built with real experience, real passion, and real care.

I’m also working alongside another developer who has deep experience building technology for the streaming space — and together, we’re putting everything we’ve learned into creating something better for creators.

Now that intros are out of the way, let’s get to the good stuff — our first official development update. 🚀

For the past 6 months, we’ve been heads-down building a proof of concept. The first mission: figure out the core infrastructure, services, and features PlayBroadcast needs to meet the real, everyday needs of content creators and viewers.

I’m going to be straight with you — we didn’t build our own video delivery network from scratch. (The cost and team size needed for that would be insane.) And honestly? Most major platforms don’t either. Behind the curtain, a lot of the names you know are built on the same video infrastructure providers.

After a ton of research, testing, and real-world validation, we chose Cloudflare Stream as the backbone for PlayBroadcast. They handle video storage, encoding, and global delivery — all in one place — without hitting us with outrageous bandwidth fees. Their network is insanely fast, globally distributed, and secure right out of the gate.

What that means for you: smoother streams, faster load times, no surprises. And more time for us to focus on building the features and community that matter most — not getting buried in server ops.

Once we finalized our video infrastructure, the next focus was designing PlayBroadcast’s core architecture. We’re building PlayBroadcast as an API-first platform — every action in the UI is powered by a versioned, secured API designed with scalability and maintainability in mind.

From the start, we’ve architected the system with a public API in mind, giving developers full access to build custom apps, tools, and integrations on top of PlayBroadcast. This wasn’t an afterthought — we baked it into the foundation early, knowing a strong developer ecosystem will be key to giving our users more value, more choice, and more innovation.

After establishing our core API architecture, we moved on to authentication and authorization. Because our platform is API-first, we needed a secure, standardized way for users to authorize third-party apps without compromising their accounts or data.

We chose to integrate an OIDC 2.0-compliant identity provider, ensuring compatibility with modern authentication flows like the Authorization Code Flow with PKCE. This approach allows us to securely issue access tokens, manage scopes and permissions, and easily extend into features like social login or federated identity in the future — all while keeping user security at the core of the experience.

One of the biggest features for any live streaming platform is live chat.
We explored several third-party chat providers, but most didn’t meet our performance needs or offer the level of customization we wanted for PlayBroadcast.

In the end, we decided to build our own live chat system.
We leveraged Cloudflare Workers and Durable Objects to create a custom, scalable solution. Cloudflare had a basic proof of concept available, which gave us a solid starting point — but from there, we added a ton of features to make it fast, reliable, and truly tailored for the kind of real-time experience we know streamers and viewers expect.

This is just the beginning of what we’re building. We’re not here to chase trends or cut corners — PlayBroadcast is about creating a real home for gamers and creators who deserve better. A place where the focus stays on the games, the community, and the freedom to create without fear.

Thanks for following along on this first update — and get ready, because soon we’ll be sharing early looks, sneak peeks, and ways for you to get involved.
Alpha testing isn’t far away. 🎮🚀

Stay tuned — this is just the start.