Valve has revealed that they are launching Steam Recoding, with a public beta.
On their website, they explain that you can activate it to record in the background automatically, or record on demand. Of course, the former will be the ideal option if you’re a streamer, an esports athlete, a beginner looking to improve your game, or just kind of vain, no judgement here.
Valve’s implementation doesn’t seem to have anything unique or novel attached to it, but that’s probably for the best. They explain that it’s been designed to offload to Nvidia and AMD graphics cards when available. When not, they acknowledge that there could be a performance impact, but they’ve still designed it to use as little resources as possible.
Game recording will work for any game that has Steam overlay. So it should be good for nearly everything on Steam, but some older games may not have it. Of course, Valve being Valve, they also offer a host of options that they’ve seen other platforms offer, and improve them as much as possible.
For example, you do have the choice to record entire gameplay sessions, or select clips, to view on your own or share online. For what it’s worth, Valve confirms you will default export to MP4, for best compatibility, but did not indicate integration with Twitter/X, Facebook, YouTube, Tiktok, or other platforms.
You specify the recording settings, including video quality, length, and how much hard drive space it uses. If your gameplay goes past the hard drive limit, the oldest recordings will be overwritten. There’s also a marker system, where you choose points in gameplay that you can quickly go back to. Some games can also detect and place markers for you.
As expected, Valve’s Steam recording system promises the world, and will likely deliver on nearly most of those promises. Maybe some fans would have hoped that they could have implemented it sooner, but perhaps there was a reason for the delay.
Steam recording is also verified for Steam Deck, making it the handheld of choice for the very select niche of people who want to record their gameplay on their gaming handhelds. Since Nintendo doesn’t have this feature for the Switch, it was an opportunity for everyone else. But none of the popular game recording software out there, such as OBS, Fraps, and Xbox Game Bar, have been optimized for use on gaming handhelds yet.
