Editorial policy

This page describes how material on obs-studio.net is commissioned, researched, written, reviewed, published, updated and retired. It is the standard we hold ourselves to, and the standard you should hold us to.

1. Independence

OBS-Studio.net is an independent education and reference site. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the OBS Project, and it does not distribute or host OBS Studio. OBS Studio is free and open source software; always download it from the official project site at https://obsproject.com/.

Editorial decisions are made by the editorial team alone. Advertisers, affiliate partners, plugin authors, hardware vendors and streaming platforms have no input into what is published, how a product is described, or the order in which options are recommended. No one outside the editorial team sees a page before publication, and no page is withdrawn because a vendor objects to an accurate description.

2. What we publish

• Diagnostics — symptom-first troubleshooting: what you see, why it happens, what to check, in the order that resolves it fastest.
• Tutorials — task-based walkthroughs written against a named OBS Studio version.
• Reference — plugins, hardware, streaming platforms and per-game capture behaviour.
• Learning paths — an order to read existing guides in, for people starting from zero.
• FAQ — short answers to questions that do not need a full guide.
• Release coverage — what changed in an OBS Studio version and what to check before updating.

3. Research and testing

Configuration advice is tested before it is published. That means running the described steps in OBS Studio on the platform in question, and confirming the described result, rather than repeating advice found elsewhere. Where behaviour depends on hardware we do not have, the guide says so explicitly instead of implying wider coverage than we can support.

Claims about how OBS Studio behaves internally — encoder selection, capture hooks, threading, logging — are checked against the project's own documentation, release notes or source, and cited. The rules for what counts as acceptable evidence are in the source policy.

4. Review before publication

Every page is reviewed by a second person against a fixed checklist before it goes live:

1. Does the page state the OBS Studio version and operating system it applies to?
2. Has every instruction been performed, in order, exactly as written?
3. Is each factual claim either verifiable in the software or supported by a cited source?
4. Are risky steps flagged, with the safer option offered first?
5. Does the page avoid implying endorsement by, or affiliation with, the OBS Project?
6. Are third-party names used only for identification, with no vendor claims we cannot support?

Content that fails any item goes back for revision. Nothing is published to fill a gap in the schedule.

5. Version discipline

OBS Studio changes, and advice ages badly when nobody says when it was true. Guides that depend on a specific release name that release. When a new version changes described behaviour, the affected guides are re-tested and updated, and the release page records what changed.

6. Updating and retiring

Pages are reviewed on a rolling basis and when a triggering event occurs: a new OBS Studio release, a plugin becoming unmaintained, a platform changing ingest requirements, or a reader reporting that something no longer matches reality. Outcomes are:

• Updated — the page is corrected and its updated date changes.
• Superseded — the page is merged into a better one and redirected, so old links keep working.
• Retired — advice that is no longer safe or applicable is withdrawn rather than left to mislead.

7. Corrections

Errors are corrected quickly and openly. Reporting routes and timescales are in the corrections policy. We do not silently rewrite a page to erase a mistake that could have caused someone to lose a recording or break a working setup.

8. Advertising and commercial content

This site is supported by advertising. Ads are served alongside editorial content and never influence which guides are published, how software is described, or the recommendations in a troubleshooting walkthrough.

Where a link to a retailer or third-party product is an affiliate link, it is labelled as such on the page it appears on. Affiliate relationships do not change our technical assessments, and no hardware entry is added or ranked in exchange for payment.

Advertising is visually distinct from editorial content. We do not publish sponsored posts dressed as guides, and we do not accept payment for inclusion in, or position within, any reference list.

9. Use of automation

Tooling is used for routine work such as link checking, spelling, formatting and finding pages affected by a new release. Technical claims, test results and recommendations are written and verified by people. No page is published as unreviewed generated text.

10. Safety and risk

Guides on this site describe configuration changes you make to your own system and software. They are provided without warranty of any kind. Back up your OBS Studio profile and scene collection before making significant changes.

Where a step can lose work — overwriting a scene collection, resetting a profile, changing encoder settings mid-stream — the guide says so before the step, not after it.

11. Reader contact

Questions, disputes and correction requests go through the contact form and are answered by a person. We do not require an account to report an error.

This policy was last updated 6 August 2026.