How to Fix Steam Failed to Load Broadcast

Wondering how you can fix the Steam failed to load broadcast error?

Broadcasting your game is quite an enjoyable experience, especially if they don’t want to play but would just like to watch. While there are a lot of ways that you can livestream your game, Steam has a broadcast feature that’s quite handy—except for when it doesn’t work.

Unfortunately, if you’re reading this article, you’ve probably run into the ‘failed to load broadcast’ issue that happens on Steam. Luckily, we’ve found several methods and fixes that you can try to help fix this issue.

With that in mind, let’s get your broadcast back up and running. Here’s how you can fix Steam’s ‘failed to load broadcast’ error.

Let’s get started!

• 1. Check Your Internet.
• 2. Reconfigure Your Broadcast Settings.
• 3. Add Steam To Your Firewall Program.
• 4. Disable Your Antivirus Software.
• 5. Update Steam.
• 6. Watch The Broadcast From Your Browser.
• 7. Reinstall Steam.

1. Check Your Internet.

First off, your internet connection might be too slow or inconsistent. This is particularly common with dysfunctional routers, loose wires, and so on. You might want to try going through your LAN or Wi-Fi connection to see how well your internet is doing.

Additionally, a slow internet connection will have a hard time trying to load broadcasts. While there are a lot of speed test websites out there, you can try Google’s internet speed test to see how well you’re doing.

Internet that’s generally below the 5mbps range will have a hard time connecting to and hosting a Steam broadcast. If your internet bandwidth is supposed to be much higher than what you’re currently getting, you might want to try giving your modem a restart.

2. Reconfigure Your Broadcast Settings.

The broadcasting feature has a lot of options that you can choose from and configure. Part of this process is figuring out who can access and see your broadcast. Perhaps your broadcast or your friend’s have the feature disabled or restricted.

A restricted broadcast might only allow friends to watch the stream or even go as far as to limit the participants by having them request to join before they can tune in. Whichever the case, the fix for this is pretty easy and shouldn’t take too long to do.

Here’s how you can reconfigure your broadcast settings:

1. Start by opening up the Steam app and going to the Steam button at the top-left corner of your screen.
2. From there, move your mouse down and click on Settings.
3. A new window should open up on your screen, look for and click on Broadcasting.

4. Under Privacy setting: change the configuration into Anyone can watch my games or Friends can watch my games. Feel free to experiment with whichever setting works for you here.

Once you’ve done that, give your Steam client a restart for good measure. Hopefully, this fixed your ‘failed to load broadcast’ issue on Steam.

3. Add Steam To Your Firewall Program.

Running any app—even default programs from Steam—can require a lot of network permissions. This is perfectly normal considering that Steam allows you to connect to different servers and even host your own lobby.

Unfortunately, this behavior isn’t particularly common with most apps which can give Steam a red flag from most antivirus and firewall programs. In this case, your firewall might be restricting some features from Steam that are essential for network connections.

Before you proceed with this step, you will need administrative privileges on your computer. In this method, we’ll be adding Steam to your firewall’s whitelist, which is basically a list of programs that are not closely restricted by your firewall.

While we don’t recommend that you do this for every app with a network problem, you can do this for Steam since it’s a trustworthy source. Although your firewall is meant to protect you, it can get into mishaps like this where it blocks Steam even though it isn’t malicious software.

4. Disable Your Antivirus Software.

Just like the method above, your antivirus can also block Steam from utilizing and accessing certain permissions that involve your network. Supposedly, your antivirus isn’t directly responsible for network protection. Despite that, some third-party antivirus programs do monitor your network activities.

Unfortunately, we cannot provide a general list of steps to help you disable or add Steam to your antivirus’ whitelist. This is due to the fact that every antivirus program is configured and interfaced differently.

You can always try to check through Google for steps on how to disable your antivirus or add Steam to your AV’s whitelist. A competent third-party antivirus program should have these instructions on their company website.

5. Update Steam.

Now, if the methods above didn’t work, then perhaps you or your friend is running an outdated version of Steam. This is a very common issue, especially for users that have disabled the auto-update feature.

Thankfully, the step-by-step process of updating your Steam client is neither complicated nor tedious. Before you proceed, however, make sure that you’re connected to a stable internet network.

Here’s how you can update your Steam client:

1. First, open up the Steam app.
2. Now, on the top-left corner of your screen, click on the Steam button.

3. Finally, look for and select Check for Steam Client updates.

The process from hereon is pretty automatic. You’ll be asked if you want to update your Steam client if a pending update is available. Additionally, you might want to try opting in and out of the beta program to try and fix your problem.

6. Watch The Broadcast From Your Browser.

While a handful of users often refuse to open the Steam website on their browser, this might be the best alternative for you right now. By connecting to the broadcast through your browser, you should bypass any software errors from the Steam client itself.

This way, your completely functional browser should connect you to your friend’s broadcast without a problem. Hopefully, this fixes your ‘failed to load broadcast’ error from Steam.

Here’s how you can watch the broadcast from your browser:

1. Go ahead and open up the Steam website then log into your account.
2. Once you’re on the home page, click on your profile picture at the top-right corner of your screen to go to your profile.
3. From there, scroll down and click on Friends.

4. Now, on the search bar above, look for the friend that’s broadcasting their game and go to their profile.
5. Lastly, you should see a Watch Game button on their profile to indicate that you can view their broadcast. Click this button to open up the broadcast on your browser.

With that finally done, you should be able to watch your friend’s livestream on your browser. Let us know if this helped fix your ‘failed to load broadcast’ Steam error.

7. Reinstall Steam.

If you’ve exhausted all the methods above without any luck, try reinstalling Steam altogether. Luckily, while this process takes a lot of time, we’ve compiled an extensive and thorough list of steps to help you reinstall Steam.

Our guide has an additional step that will help you completely remove Steam from your computer, which will provide a more effective reinstallation. Now, if you’re hesitating to do this, we completely understand why you feel reluctant.

The entire process can take quite a while depending on your computer. For what it’s worth, some users have found that there isn’t a lot of support for the broadcasting feature of Steam.

This is due to the fact that the audience for this feature is scarce and any software problems that arise from the feature are generally too broad. There are too many things that could go wrong with this feature that Steam can’t help with specific fixes.

Despite that, you can always contact Steam’s customer support to try and fix this problem. Hopefully, we helped you fix the ‘failed to load broadcast’ from Steam. If you have any questions, go ahead and leave us a comment down below.

If this guide helped you, please share it. 🙂