Minecraft livestreaming becomes easier starting next week

Minecraft's 1.7.3 update will be available in pre-release form next week and allow native Twitch streaming, according to a post on developer Mojang's official site.

The update's banner feature will allow users to broadcast their gameplay more easily through the streaming service. The post details what players will need to do to get it up and running on Windows Vista and higher and Mac OS X Lion (10.7) and higher.

"Before you can start streaming, you will need to visit your Mojang account settings and link a Twitch account to your Mojang account," the post reads. "Then in the game you may check the quality settings in Options -> Broadcast Options, or just go ahead and start broadcasting at any time by hitting F6. This key can be configured in the Controls options."

The update will also fix render distances set above eight in single-player games and contain a slew of bug fixes and optimizations.

Mojang announced its partnership with Twitch in early November at Minecon.

Update: A previous version of this article referred to update 1.7.2, which was previously released. We've update the article with the correct version and apologize for the error.