After many, many months of several features being in beta and preview phases for both Steam and SteamOS, all Steam users can now play around with the latest features that this week's updates from Steam provide, with perhaps the biggest one being the native Game Recording feature that Steam has implemented.

The latest Steam Client update from November 5th added the brand new Game Recording feature by Steam, which offers players the option to record gameplay footage directly within Steam itself, without having to rely on any external screen capture tools or software. This last update was first introduced in the beta for SteamOS 3.6, which as of a few days ago, was released into the main Stable branch of SteamOS with version 3.6.19, but with the Game Recording feature missing. Now the latest update of the Steam Client and the subversion update of Steam OS 3.6.20 brings the missing feature to all Steam users to enjoy.

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The main Game Recording settings are located beneath the Storage settings in Steam and it has 3 options by default, "Recording Off", "Record in Background"; which makes it so that recording automatically begins upon launching a game, and "Record Manually"; which toggles recording on or off depending on user input. Additionally, users will be able to turn recording on or off with the shortcut combination of the Steam button + A, and pressing Steam+Y will add a timeline marker to the recording. There's also options for maximum frame rate and video height for the recording as well as recording quality, and even an option to enable microphone recording (amongst some audio recording options if enabled).

Once a video has been recorded, Steam offers several options to share the video, be it through send it to another device, send it to phone, create a QR link to share with other people, or share to a chat. Some sharing options are limited by the length of the video. In case a video is too long, users can trim the video right from Steam by going into the Media setting.

Be wary though, as this new feature does take processing power from the system, which could cause a performance hit (-5 fps or so) when playing higher specs games, depending on what the system the recording is being made from.

Source
Steam Game Recording page

 

[thekarter104]

Wow, this seems nice. We'll, if you have a beefy PC that is. I know you can record with external recording software, but this goes automatically now. Neat.

 

[ut2k4master]

Wow, this seems nice. We'll, if you have a beefy PC that is. I know you can record with external recording software, but this goes automatically now. Neat.

you dont need a beefy pc

 

[The Real Jdbye]

No built in live streaming support (from the looks of it), means it has limited usefulness, at least for now. Most people who record games also stream these days. Maybe that will get added in the future. Of course it won't be feasible to implement more advanced features like overlays so it will never be a full replacement for OBS/XSplit. But could be good enough for many, and sure is a lot easier to set up.
For now, it's a useful alternative to Nvidia Shadowplay (especially for AMD users)

 

[kijetesantakalu042]

This isn't the most useful feature, but it's nice.

Also I'm tempted to say "What does this have to do with gaming"

 

[DKB]

I hope this is better than ShadowPlay. I've had problems with it for years.

 

[SecureBoot]

Does this have the ability to record ephemerally like the switch does? That's one feature I miss since going to primarily PC. Being able to save the last 30 seconds of gameplay is a really cool feature

 

[ut2k4master]

Does this have the ability to record ephemerally like the switch does? That's one feature I miss since going to primarily PC. Being able to save the last 30 seconds of gameplay is a really cool feature

yes

 

[ZeroFX]

nice, i like that steam is not just a store but a nice platform for games, i hope it never craps itself.

 

[The Catboy]

Oh the memes I can make with this!

 

[Armadillo]

For now, it's a useful alternative to Nvidia Shadowplay (especially for AMD users)

Why especially for AMD? AMD users already have Relive, which is their equivelent to Shadowplay.

That's one feature I miss since going to primarily PC. Being able to save the last 30 seconds of gameplay is a really cool feature

That feature has been available on PC for years. Nvidia has it with Shadowplay, AMD has it with Relive and the Microsoft game bar can also do it.

 

[SecureBoot]

Why especially for AMD? AMD users already have Relive, which is their equivelent to Shadowplay.



That feature has been available on PC for years. Nvidia has it with Shadowplay, AMD has it with Relive and the Microsoft game bar can also do it.

I actually didn't know about relive, but I don't like having a ton of third party software open while I'm playing games. Centralizing it to steam is an absolute win for me

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Why especially for AMD? AMD users already have Relive, which is their equivelent to Shadowplay.



That feature has been available on PC for years. Nvidia has it with Shadowplay, AMD has it with Relive and the Microsoft game bar can also do it.

I didn't know about that.

I find the game bar annoying because it pops up when I don't want it. So I disabled it.

 

[hippy dave]

Also I'm tempted to say "What does this have to do with gaming"

 

[kijetesantakalu042]

View attachment 469990

It was a joke. (Last two GBAtemp news post were not gaming related)

 

[orangy57]

Would be interested to see if this takes a performance hit compared to built-in GPU recording software like Shadowplay and ReLive. I wonder how bad it is for crappy PCs that don't even have dedicated encoding hardware (like my laptop)

 

[BlusterBong]

Wow GabeN, another feature that should have been available to everyone or at least the group of linux users that use the same distro type as you do for your Steam Decks on day 1, very cool.

 

[SDA]

Actually pretty useful if you want to make videoclips.

 

[Kraken_X]

I liked this feature more on the PS5 than I thought I would. I can save off cool or funny moments after they occur with no worries about capturing them as they happen. If I miss a piece of dialog or part of a cut scene I can replay that also.

Not sure it's worth the extra disk IO, storage, and performance hit on PC though. On PS5 it's always on, so no impact.

 

[NTolerance]

I've been using OBS to record clips for years because I didn't want to install the Geforce experience. Nice to have it built-in now and I can stop using OBS.