Let’s take a moment to pay our respects to ShadowPlay, the once-reigning champion of PC game recording. Today, it officially hands over its crown because Steam Game Recording has rolled out of beta and is now available to all.
Which means Steam is now even closer to becoming the Swiss Army knife of gaming apps.
Steam’s new Record feature doesn’t just let you record gameplay; it also comes with built-in editing tools and an oh-so-handy marker system.
Picture this, you’re cruising through a game, and something epic (or hilariously embarrassing) happens. Now, you can slap a marker down right on the timeline, making it easy to rewatch those magical moments later.
Developers can also add automatic “game-added” markers, tagging major in-game milestones so you won’t miss your character’s peak hero moments. It’s like the way Xbox and PlayStation capture every trophy or achievement you earn, only now, you’ll have that extra footage for those “Yeah, I totally meant to do that” moments.
Steam’s recording mode also comes in two flavours: background and on-demand. The background mode chugs along until it hits your storage cap, while on-demand lets you hit record whenever the spirit moves you. And with replay just a quick tap away in the Steam overlay, you’ll be able to capture, clip, and crop faster than your respawn timer.
Since this feature uses the Steam overlay, it works across all your Steam games and is baked right into the Steam Deck as well. Even better, it can capture non-Steam games, and it’s smart enough to avoid any desktop mishaps by only recording the active game window – so no accidental video clips of your… cluttered desktop.