Isn’t the article talking about live streaming like on Twitch? As opposed to game streaming over a system like Stadia

Then it doesn't need "optimize for streaming" it needs a straight to stream rather than render then re encode.

That seems like a pretty good idea generally. For a single-player game an extra straight-to-stream output could even show extra info; be third person, etc.

Hell, why not include the ability to render locally, like a halo/StarCraft (and many other series of course, these are just the two I remember) replay.

The player still has to see the game and "watching your own stream" introduces significant (inconsistent) latency making it inappropriate for any game with timing.

This is confusing me as well. I thought it was about game "streaming," but after reading the comments I'm thinking maybe its about "game streaming."

But the problem is fundamentally the same, as they are both using GPU hardware encoders to stream a game to a client.

I think it is. It still seems like a minority situation to me. How much of a player base is streamers that it makes sense to optimize games for Twitch? Wouldn't it make more sense for Twitch to optimize video codecs for games in mind instead?

The viewership and exposure level is so great on Twitch/Youtube/Facebook/etc that games already have "streamer modes" that hide information to, for example, help prevent stream snipers (including big games like Call of Duty).

Streaming is big. Making your game look good when streamed is probably worthwhile. Arguably some game genres and trends wouldn't even exist if not for streaming.

Battle Royale games were based on a little known ARMA mod that was popularized by streamers like Lirik which lead to more people playing them which lead to more games like that being made.

A small fraction of players, but its a critical fraction to market a game. Many games already have a "streamer mode" that disables licensed music among other things.

I might have misread something but I think the author means "streaming" to mean when you are streaming the game to an audience on a service like twitch. You mean it in the sense of playing the game on a game client that's actually rendered somewhere else (e.g. a data center)

It's about watching others play.