Valve has announced a new suite of Steam game recording tools which will allow you to record, clip, and share game footage directly within Steam.
Per an official announcement, the aptly-named Steam Game Recording feature offers two ways to capture your footage. You can either grab it in the background without needing to press record, or you can set the feature up to record on-demand according to your input.
Once footage has been captured, you can easily and quickly replay it, grab clips from it, and share those clips either to Steam chat or to external platforms.
The tool’s Timeline feature appears while you’re recording, and if a game is “Timeline-enhanced”, it’ll automatically generate markers for certain events, like killing bosses or discovering new areas. Of course, you can also add your own markers.
Right now, two games are Timeline-enhanced, and it won’t surprise you to learn they’re both Valve games: Counter-Strike 2 and Dota 2.
Once you’ve got your footage, you can save it as a clip or export it as an MP4, and you can also send clips between a PC and a Steam Deck. Oh, that’s right: Steam Game Recording is completely functional on Steam Deck as well.
The new Game Recording tool works across any Steam game; as long as you can access the Steam overlay, you can access Game Recording as well, which is pretty neat. Not all games are Timeline-enhanced, though.
You can also tell Steam how much disk space you want footage to take up, as well as for how long you want the tool to record if it’s set up not to need your input.
Steam Game Recording is available right now if you’re using the Steam beta client; all you need to do is head to Settings, then Game Recording (assuming your Steam client is up to date).
If you’re not using the beta, just head to your Steam settings, then Interface, then Beta Participation. Pick one of the two betas to participate in, then update and/or restart your client as needed.
As well as announcing the Game Recording beta, Valve also released some interesting Steam Input stats yesterday. According to Valve, controller use on Steam has tripled since 2018.
59% of controller sessions are using Xbox controllers, Valve says, while 26% are using PlayStation controllers and 10% are Steam Deck users.
Presumably, some of them will also eventually be users of the newly-announced Wireless Horipad, which is launching in October in Japan. No word yet on a Western release, so stay tuned for more.
