Valve has stuffed a bunch of features into Steam over the years, but its latest addition might be the most game-changing. The company is now introducing built-in game recording to the platform. However, in addition to the usual assortment of functions, there’s a few twists here that may make it the de facto choice for a lot of gamers.
Simply titled ‘Game Recording’, the new Steam feature leverages your graphics card’s hardware encoder to capture clips. It is possible to use your processor instead, in lieu of a pixel pusher, but expect performance to drop even on the best CPUs on the market. Still, don’t let that stop you from using it on Steam Deck, with support already available for the handheld.
Valve announced and launched a beta for Game Recording on June 26. In addition to its background and on-demand recording capabilities, ala Nvidia ShadowPlay, it also boasts a bevy of other attractive features. Steam now has its own editing suite of sorts to curate your clips, as well as a replay function and convenient sharing options.
The most compelling of all are timeline markers. If a developer integrates the Steam Game Recording SDK into their title, the software will automatically signpost events to make editing easier. This could include things like a bomb plant in CS2 or a hero kill in Dota 2. We’ve seen features like this before in Medal.tv (formerly Fuze.tv) and Insights.gg. Additionally, you’ll also get indicators for a game’s state, whether it’s in a menu or during gameplay, to make it easily discernible. Should adoption become widespread, this could easily make Valve’s offering a cut above competitors like OBS and more.
You can read more about Game Recording and how to enable it for yourself over on its official Steam store page. As a reminder, though, this isn’t its final version of the feature so expect a few bugs and be sure to give your feedback to Valve via the Game Recording Beta Steam Group. Curiously, though, the company promises more is in the works, explicitly highlighting “individualised game settings” as an example.
It goes without saying that you’ll need to route all your games through your Steam library to use this feature. Sorry, Ubisoft Connect and EA App users, that’s just the way the cookie crumbles.
Be sure to have some extra storage handy for any recordings, though. With this in mind, give our best SSD guide a once over for our preferred picks.