TL;DR: PC avid gamers who stream or share gameplay clips often depend on instruments like Microsoft’s Recreation Bar or extra complicated third-party options. Valve goals to supply a brand new possibility that embeds accessible recording instruments into everybody’s Steam consumer. One of many characteristic’s most unusual side is that it brings recreation recording performance to the Steam Deck, too.
Everybody who makes use of the Steam launcher can now shortly entry controls to create, edit, and share clips utilizing the beta consumer’s new native gameplay recording interface.
Customers can report classes of a determinate size (set to 120 minutes by default) mechanically or with the press of a hotkey. Bitrate and disk house limits are additionally accessible. Valve estimates a two-hour video on the default 12Mbps high quality stage ought to be round 10 GB.
The recorder helps any recreation that does not battle with the Steam overlay, together with non-Steam video games. For privateness, it solely data the sport window. Customers also can management when to report audio from different software program like voice chat, and pictures isn’t mechanically uploaded.
The characteristic makes use of the video encoding capabilities of AMD and Nvidia GPUs by default to reduce efficiency affect, although Valve does not point out assist for Intel Arc playing cards or AV1 encoding. Steam shops footage in a uncooked format to extend effectivity, however customers can shortly export mp4 clips.
It additionally has quite a lot of methods to share clips. Customers can ship movies between units the place Steam is put in, together with to or from a Steam Deck, to cell units utilizing the Steam app or QR codes, instantly into Steam chat home windows, or by means of non permanent URL hyperlinks.
Steam achievements mechanically mark factors in recording timelines, and gamers can manually add bookmarks. The characteristic has performance that permits video games to focus on participant deaths, boss fights, menu screens, lobbies, main accomplishments, or different essential moments mechanically. Ahead and backward chapter controls allow gamers to skim by means of highlights shortly. Valve additionally launched developer instruments to facilitate navigating recordings.
The brand new software remains to be in beta, however customers can simply enter the Steam beta by navigating to Settings > Interface > Beta Participation and deciding on any beta possibility. As soon as the Steam consumer has up to date to the beta department, head to Settings > Recreation Recording and select the specified mode. Valve encourages customers to depart suggestions within the Recreation Recording dialogue group.