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Another big upgrade for Steam desktop and Steam Deck fans, with Game Recording now in Beta allowing you to easily clip your favourite moments with no external apps needed. Valve said this system is Steam Deck Verified and fully functional there too!

This will work across two modes:

  • Background Recording - always active when in-game, with you being able to set the limits on it.
  • On Demand - recording from when you tap a key.

That's not all. It's an entire system for developers to hook into for their games as well. When you're recording, you get a special timeline that appears. Developers can hook into this, to show event markers on this. Overall, it sounds pretty awesome.

It even makes sharing the clips relatively simple too with you being able to send it to different devices, like from a Steam Deck to desktop PC.

What we're getting is only the start, since this is in Beta. Valve said to expect more "upcoming features, including individualized game settings (coming soon)". And with this, they've also redesigned the Screenshots interface in Steam to include Recordings now too.

Here's a quick clip I recorded directly via Steam on my Kubuntu Linux desktop (game is Rack and Slay):

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As you can see, all fine! That was on the default 12Mbps High setting.

The export function at least on Kubuntu seems broken, as it tries to open a file instead of saving the file. So for now you can make a temporary share link instead, and download it from that. Update 27/06/24: this is solved in a new update.

And a clip recorded from my Steam Deck LCD 512GB, which I then used the built-in feature to send it to my desktop and upload (game is Brotato):

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This was again on the default of 12Mbps High setting.

From the brief test there across the two systems, it's really useful and works very nicely. This is a feature many have been asking for and Valve delivered. Even editing the clips directly on a Steam Deck is stupidly easy to do. I'm seriously impressed by this.


Pictured - me editing the Brotato video clip included above, directly on Steam Deck.

See more on the Game Recordings Beta page. And the Beta Changelog.

Additionally, on Steam Deck in the Beta update, Valve noted "Client and OS beta settings been updated to include a new "Preview" build of SteamOS when available for testing".

Finally there's a new Steamworks SDK update to go with it.

Valve are once again clearly showing why they earn my monies.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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31 comments
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pb Jun 26
Yes, finally! Thanks, Gabe! So many times I wished I had some background recording after witnessing a weird or funny moment in the game, but not enough to warrant setting up constant recording with OBS or some other tools that came and went in the meanwhile. Hopefully this one will work nicely with wayland (it must).
Viesta2015 Jun 26
Quoting: pbYes, finally! Thanks, Gabe! So many times I wished I had some background recording after witnessing a weird or funny moment in the game, but not enough to warrant setting up constant recording with OBS or some other tools that came and went in the meanwhile. Hopefully this one will work nicely with wayland (it must).

This seems like such a perfect moderation/bug reporting tool...
Tharvas Jun 26
I hope there is an option to have the cached data in RAM if plenty to spare to not wear down and degrade the SSD too fast and only with the hotkey pressed the clip will be written to disk.
Exidan Jun 26
is 720p the max resolution of the rocording?
hengecobdig Jun 26
Quoting: TharvasI hope there is an option to have the cached data in RAM if plenty to spare to not wear down and degrade the SSD too fast and only with the hotkey pressed the clip will be written to disk.
+1 to this. With that said, you could set up the recording directory to be in a tmpfs.
this is awesome! i won't have use ubuntu's built-in recorder anymore!
sonic2kk Jun 26
Unfortunately this is not usable on the Linux Desktop, at least on Arch with Plasma 6.1, as the Steam Overlay does not work.

EDIT: Running Steam from the commandline does allow the Steam Overlay to function again. But the Game Recording Timeline has issues interacting with the UI (depending on the display it is on, only certain sections can be interacted with). Both of these issues have already been reported upstream at ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux.


Last edited by sonic2kk on 26 June 2024 at 9:27 pm UTC
YASSSSSSSS!~
I've been saying for YEARS that they need to add this! It makes too much sense, they already had all the pieces in the software, like video capture, video encoding, taking screenshots, overlay etc. It was such a small leap to make, to go from that to video recording.

It's going to make recording stuff from games so much easier.
trev0r Jun 26
super useful for me as a deck user
Oooh, nice! The game Noita comes with a built-in clip capturing ability (as GIFs), and I've used that many a time to capture its chaotic hilarity. I'd love to have that ability easily available in any game (I know other solutions exist, but I'm lazy ).

Also, Valve, this shows you know how to record video with sound on Linux, so you have no excuse for Steam's game streaming feature only working on Windows anymore!
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