Chapter 3 of 5
Running your request queue live
The queue is where Gleem stops being a settings page and starts being part of your stream. It is also where most of the anxiety lives, because a list of things people have paid for feels like an obligation.
It is not. The queue is a tool for saying yes at a pace you choose, and a few habits make the difference between it helping and it hanging over you.
Open it deliberately
A queue has to be opened before viewers can add to it. That is not an administrative step — it is the whole design. The queue being closed is the normal state, and opening it is you saying "I have room for this right now".
Open it when you are settled: the game is loaded, the chat is warm, you are not about to start something that needs concentration. Requests that arrive while you are mid-boss-fight are requests that sit there making you feel behind.
When you open the queue you can set a closing time, and Gleem will close it for you when that time arrives. This is more useful than it sounds. Deciding in advance that requests stop at half nine is much easier than deciding it at half nine, when three people are waiting and you feel rude. The picker suggests times you have used before and a few hours out from now, all in your own local time.
Work the list, do not watch it
Each request has one obvious next step. A waiting request offers Start. A started request offers Done. That is the entire loop.
Start something when you begin it, not when you plan to. The started state is what tells everyone — including you — which one is live right now. If you start three things at once, the queue stops being a queue.
A finished request can be reopened if you marked it done too early. Nothing in here is a one-way door.
Refund without agonising
If you cannot do a request — you misread it, it needs something you do not have, it was rude, you are simply out of energy — refund it. The viewer gets their gems or their ticket back, and the request is settled.
This is the most important habit on the page, and the one people resist. A refund is not a failure. It is the mechanism that makes the whole thing safe to use. If refunding is always available, then accepting a request costs you nothing, and you can take them freely. If you treat refunds as defeat, you will start hesitating before opening the queue at all.
Say it on stream when you do it: "I'm going to refund that one, it's not happening tonight." Viewers are almost universally fine with it. What they mind is silence.
Removing is different from refunding
A request can only be removed from the list once it is finished or refunded. This is deliberate, and it occasionally surprises people.
Deleting a request that is still waiting would destroy something a viewer paid for without giving anything back. So the order is always: settle it first — done or refunded — then remove it if you want it out of the way. The menu will tell you when removal is not available yet.
Requests carry their answers
If a Treat asks a question, the viewer's answer arrives with the request and is shown underneath it. You never have to scroll chat looking for the name somebody typed ninety seconds ago.
This is worth designing around. Any Treat where you find yourself asking "wait, who was that for?" should be prompting for text.
Put it on screen
The overlay is a browser source for OBS that shows the current queue on stream. It is optional and it does two things that are hard to get any other way.
It tells the people waiting where they are, which removes almost all of the "am I next?" chat. And it advertises the whole system to everyone watching who has never used it — somebody sees three names on screen and understands the idea without you explaining it.
Closing without apologising
Close the queue when you are done taking requests, not when the list is empty. Those are different moments, and conflating them is how streamers end up working through a backlog at 2am.
A closed queue still shows your menu. Viewers can see what you offer, they just cannot add to tonight's list. Anything still waiting when you close is still there — finish it, or refund it, and either is a reasonable way to end the night.
A workable rhythm
- Settle in. Open the queue, set a closing time an hour or two out.
- Work the list one at a time. Start, do, done.
- Refund anything you cannot do, out loud, without ceremony.
- Let it close itself. Clear whatever is left, by finishing or refunding.
Next: what viewers are actually spending, and how gems and Trigger Tickets differ.