Steam, the popular game launcher and storefront run by Valve, is finally testing a feature that would allow players to record gameplay clips right from the Steam app.
It announced the “Game Recording Beta” in a Steamworks Development Events blog and with a dedicated web page Wednesday afternoon. The gist of Steam Game Recording is that players will be able to record footage of themselves playing a game in the background while using Steam. This has multiple uses. Using the Steam Overlay, players will be able to replay clips of gameplay they just captured and find “key moments” from their playtime through event markers on something Valve calls the Steam Timeline.
People can also use tools to clip and lightly edit that gameplay footage, and the Recordings & Screenshots interface on Steam is being reworked to make editing and sharing easier. Right from Steam, players will be able to share gameplay videos with friends, export them, or save them through a Save/Share menu. Valve wants Game Recording to work on Steam Deck, and Valve wants to make it easy to send those Steam Deck videos to the Steam apps on PC and mobile.
For those worried about the impact this will have on the performance of their games, Valve says it designed Steam Game Recording “with the goal of taking as little computer resources away from the game you are playing as possible,” especially if people are using an Nvidia or AMD graphics card. Players can try out game recording by opting into the Steam Client Beta group, while game developers will be able to add more in-depth Game Recording support to their games through Steamworks.
