Joining games from a spectating system

A method, comprising:

• performing, by a spectating system implemented on one or more computing devices:
• streaming one or more broadcasts received from one or more broadcaster devices to a plurality of spectator devices, wherein each broadcast shows game play of a respective broadcaster participating as a player in a game executing on a game system;
• generating broadcast content for the broadcasts at least in part according to game metadata;
• obtaining indications of spectator interactions with the broadcast content including interactions indicating requests to join the game;
• and
• facilitating provisioning of one or both of a game client or a game state to respective spectator devices in response to the requests, wherein said provisioning enables participation in the game from the respective spectator devices.

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing program instructions that when executed on one or more computers cause the one or more computers to implement a spectating system configured to:

• generate broadcast content for a broadcast received from a broadcaster device, wherein the broadcast shows game play of a respective broadcaster participating as a player in a game executing on a game system, and wherein the broadcast content is generated at least in part according to game metadata received from the game system according to an application programming interface (API);
• provide the broadcast content to a plurality of spectator devices according to a spectating user interface (UI), wherein the broadcast content includes UI elements for joining the game;
• obtain spectator interactions with the broadcast content according to the spectating UI, wherein the spectator interactions include inputs to the UI elements indicating requests to join the game;
• and
• in response to the requests, generate inputs to the game system according to the API requesting provisioning of one or both of a game client or a game state to the respective spectator devices.