Steam Game Recording Now Available to All

Valve has announced that all Sream players can screen record gameplay without using additional software, as this feature is now officially out of beta.

Steam Game Recording entered beta testing this summer but is now available to everyone in the updated Steam client for Windows PCs and Macs (which no longer runs on Windows 7, Windows 8, macOS High Sierra 10.13, and macOS Mojave 10.14).

Open the Steam client and navigate to Settings > Game Recording to use the feature. Your Steam client can automatically record games in the background while you’re playing, making creating gameplay videos for sharing easy (off by default). “There are many ways to use this all-new set of features, from capturing your highlights to documenting entire campaigns,” Valve wrote. “It’s easy to find, clip, and share your gameplay.”

Or, start and stop a screen recording session manually by pressing Ctrl + F11. There are options to restrict screencast length, quality, and storage space. You can find your recordings in the Steam Overlay as MP4 video files and share them via links disguised as QR codes.

Your game records even have markers to quickly jump to specific events, like achievements earned or screenshots captured. Compatible games can add specific markers to the timeline, like when you finish a boss fight or a new round starts. Dota 2 and Counter-Strike 2 are the first games with timeline marker support, and more will come over time.

Steam Game Recording takes advantage of NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards to record gameplay without taking too many resources away from the title being played. However, that depends on the actual game, your machine configuration, and other factors. “When run on systems without those graphics cards, the systems CPU is used to create video recordings which may cause a noticeable performance impact on those systems,” Valve cautioned.

This feature isn’t limited to Steam; you can also record games on your Steam Deck to internal storage or an SD card. For further information, visit Valve’s Game Recording page.

This Steam update includes other new features aside from game recording, including per-game settings, a new view bringing recordings and screenshots manager with game-specific tags and data, support for AV1 video streaming for Remote Play on high-end systems, support for wired Xbox controllers on macOS Sequoia, and more.

Source: Valve