‘It’s Temu Google Stadia’: Vtuber showcases backseat gaming tool while playing Dark Souls 2 for the very first time

If you’ve ever played one of FromSoftware’s oeuvre in front of another Souls fan, you already know what a scourge backseat gaming is. Now imagine you’re a streamer playing in front of thousands of folks who are convinced they know better than you. Well, one streaming fan has created a lightweight tool that allows backseat gamers to prove on-stream they’re as good as they say.

Vtuber girl_dm_ recently showcased the aforementioned in-browser tool during a Dark Souls 2 stream. The streamer explained on X that the tool “takes a clone of my latest save and gives a chatter eight minutes to show me what they want me to do.” The result is then broadcast live, picture-in-picture style, to her adoring audience.

Called ‘backseatNOW 9000,’ the tool was made by one of the Vtuber’s community members, and works without the viewer needing to download anything extra. Girl_dm_ explains, “It’s essentially pulling my save info, putting it to the host computer (which is running a legal copy of the game), and [allows] the chatter to remotely play for their limited session—it’s Temu Google Stadia with a browser source viewer for me as the streamer.”

For those who may have forgotten, Google Stadia launched in 2019 and promised a game streaming revolution. The subscription-based service offered playable games streamed over the internet without the need for pricey hardware. Its streaming library included both big-budget blowouts, titles exclusive to the platform, and limited time demos, but the service ultimately shuttered in 2023.

As game streaming services live or die by the stability of the user’s internet connection, many of Stadia’s big promises about cloud-gaming were left largely unrealised.

But let’s get back to the ‘Temu Stadia’ setup, which also has its own techy quirks. For one thing, mouse and keyboard controls are currently not an option. For another, a backseat gamer will need to lock their mouse to play. You’re also slightly limited in what controller you can use to backseat, as the PS5’s DualSense does not currently play nice with the tool.

As for streamers, the tool does require more than a bit of setup. For instance, girl_dm_ uses Streamer.Bot and a Blackmagic streaming encoder for her fairly complex, interactive streams.

This also wouldn’t be much of a tool for streamers without some basic community management features. To begin with, would-be backseaters can only log in to the tool via unique credentials that girl_dm_ sends herself, and which are only valid for their eight-minute session. Anyone attempting to hijack the stream via the tool gets a chat timeout for a week.

Hiccoughs and setup aside, the implementation of the tool is pretty elegant. I know my introduction suggested something a little more ego-based and competitive, but it’s way more positive in practice.

Souls games are known for being labyrinthine in structure, with many easily missed secrets along the way. This tool allows experienced Dark Souls 2 gamers to guide first-time player girl_dm_ to the coolest corners of Drangleic, and serves as a shining example of the community at its best. Now, I wonder how backseat gamers will fare with that Dark Souls 2 path tracing mod.