Steam game recording capabilities are now available on PC and Steam Deck after a beta period. The suite of features offers a ton of flexibility that rivals other PC game cutting software, especially the GeForce Experience offered by Nvidia. This includes the basic features most people would expect, such as automatic recording or manual cutting via keyboard shortcuts. But it goes further, with easy access to replays via the Steam overlay and intuitive exporting of clips via QR codes that you can then scan with your phone to share widely, or with friends. Valve notes that the features are designed to have minimal impact on gaming performance by using your GPU to encode the recording instead of your CPU.
The per-game settings are where Steam’s recording integration further stands out, giving gamers the ability to set the automatic recording duration and recording quality of each game in their library. Valve has also created an SDK and API so developers can program in-game events – such as winning, losing or killing – to automatically trigger a clip recording. Some of that can be seen in the embedded video above from Valve.
Dota 2 is used as an example of a title with a recording timeline, another new feature that neatly arranges all clips recorded from in-game events in chronological order. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Valve’s Impasse adopt the timeline feature at some point in its silent development.
The recording features work with any game, including non-Steam titles added to the interface. So if you’re someone who adds Epic Games Store titles to Steam, or perhaps even emulated games, you should be able to capture footage. With the latest Steam update installed on PC and Steam Deck, you can configure your game’s recording settings to your liking.
Despite being over 20 years old, new and interesting Steam features continue to be released. One of the coolest additions from last year was the ability to take notes in a window when you press Shift + Tab in-game to see the Steam overlay. It’s a great way to write down things you might forget.