Valve Launches Game Recording Feature for Steam Client

[MacRumors]

Valve has officially released Steam Game Recording, a new built-in feature that allows players to capture and share gameplay footage across PC, Mac, and Steam Deck devices. The feature recently exited beta testing and is now available through the Steam client.

Steam Game Recording offers both manual and automatic recording options, with manual recording triggered by a customizable hotkey. Players can configure recording length, quality settings, and storage limits through a dedicated Game Recording tab in Steam's settings menu. The feature is disabled by default, but can be enabled through Steam's settings menu.

The feature works with any game that supports Steam Overlay, including non-Steam titles. For privacy reasons, recordings only capture the game window itself while excluding other desktop content. Additional functionality includes basic editing tools, timeline management, and flexible export options. Recorded content can then be shared directly through Steam or exported as MP4 files.

This version of the Steam client is also the first to drop support for macOS 10.13 High Sierra and 10.14 Mojave, following Valve's announcement earlier this year. Steam installations on these systems will no longer receive updates or security patches, but this is unlikely to affect that many Mac users as most will have already upgraded to newer versions.

Article Link: Valve Launches Game Recording Feature for Steam Client

 

[jayryco]

How about some native ARM support? 🤡

 

[iMean]

Vulkan support when?

 

[WarmWinterHat]

Not a gamer and don't have a steam account account so no way to check, but don't they support basically nothing on Arm Macs? Why is this on here?

 

[nitrobear]

Not a gamer and don't have a steam account account so no way to check, but don't they support basically nothing on Arm Macs? Why is this on here?

the binary still works through rosetta but yeah, the whole thing runs like hot garbage.

 

[DunedinD]

Would’ve preferred 64-bit versions of its old titles, like Portal 2, so they actually run on modern Macs. Pretty hard to record them without that.

 

[amenotef]

Hopefully they start some ARM support in the future, there were some rumours months ago.

In the past years part of their focus was to make Windows games compatible with Linux, and they succeeded remarkably on that task. There are a lot of PC with strong GPUs out there and now you can ditch Windows and game directly on Linux for most games available.

They also focused in handhelds, a market where lately Nintendo was the only choice and now there are good switch competitors like the Steam Deck (even if the game catalogue varies, now you have the PC catalogue available on-the-go instead of just Nintendo library).

So I think Apple Silicon will be next. (The new surface laptops have Qualcomm ARM, so ARM is getting more popular on desktop systems).

I'm pretty sure they have some internal ARM projects around.

 

[GianL]

Not a gamer and don't have a steam account account so no way to check, but don't they support basically nothing on Arm Macs? Why is this on here?

Steam client at the minute needs Rosetta installed, BUT in Steam you can purchase also Mac native games.

 

[nutmac]

How about some native ARM support? 🤡

My 5 remaining non-Apple Silicon apps:

1. Adobe Creative Cloud installer and license verification process (the app itself is Apple Silicon)
2. Epic Games
3. Logitech G Hub
4. Minecraft Launcher (the game itself is Apple Silicon)
5. Steam

 

[ProbablyDylan]

So I think Apple Silicon will be next. (The new surface laptops have Qualcomm ARM, so ARM is getting more popular on desktop systems).

I'm probably in agreement with you. Besides QC, we also have rumors swirling of AMD, Mediatek and Nvidia making ARM CPUs for laptops/desktops, so the ARM market will become much broader in the coming years.

 

[tubular]

I’d hope that Steam sees that Apple is now committed long-term to its current platform, and decides it’s worth support.

On my PC I can play Diablo I from, what was it, 1997? The Mac’s been through two changes in instruction set since then, and a no-but-yes-but-no approach to eGPU and OpenGL. I hope it’s finally gotten over the wiggles.

 

[CopiumWafu]

Gaming on Mac is non-sensical. Even turning this on would crush the CPU even more.

 

[tubular]

Gaming on Mac is non-sensical.

A game doesn’t have to be AAA to be enjoyable.

 

[Pakaku]

How about some native ARM support? 🤡

Probably will start to happen when Apple actually goes out of their way to stop being totally hostile, totalitarian, and overbearing to game devs first

 

[somnolentsurfer]

So can it finally cope with taking screenshots of (and displaying the overlay on) HDR games?

 

[ErikGrim]

Just a note that this feature uses way more CPU and reduces framerates severely compared to using the built in screen recording. Also doesn't give you a useful file until you've exported it. Apple gives you an h.264 file instantly.

 

[jayryco]

Probably will start to happen when Apple actually goes out of their way to stop being totally hostile, totalitarian, and overbearing to game devs first

Isn't that what Apple has been doing? Is Valve justified to keep their storefront running dismally, and how is that fair to game devs who have actually put effort into creating games running on, not only Intel Macs but gone further for Apple silicon Macs? Does megacorp Apple really need to pay megacorp Valve to create a native port for a platform as large as macOS, which has hundreds of millions of users? Even if the percentage of users that actually use Steam is small (so is Linux, but Valve’s effort is anything but small there), that is due to Macs historically being underpowered and a poor gaming platform. And if Steam was actually good, then the potential of that number growing is many orders of magnitude.
Yes, MacOS has restrictions on programming languages, but Valve creating a native port is the first step and a nudge for developers. And it's not like Apple has created Metal and left it behind; it is under active development all the time and getting better. Alongside multiple other tools creating 'easier' dev environments on their platform.
Valve’s profit margins are huge, and creating a Mac port will certainly not affect it negatively and might actually move the needle a very tiny bit forward, and isn't that what it's all about for them? Profit margins…
Valve forsaking themselves each day and what they originally stood for, like so many other great game devs and publishers of yesteryear. I bet even Gabe Newell can't look himself in the mirror and has truly given up on hope of how great they once were and now just a little rich old puppet seeking those profit margins.

 

[svish]

Good to have this option!

 

[w_aldo]

Just a note that this feature uses way more CPU and reduces framerates severely compared to using the built in screen recording. Also doesn't give you a useful file until you've exported it. Apple gives you an h.264 file instantly.

Entirely a Mac issue then. I’ve used this on windows since the beta, and even recording gameplay in 4K only drops performance by 2-3%

 

[MJaP]

If I open my Steam games library on my Windows laptop I have just over 1000 games. If I open my Steam games library on my M1 MacBook Pro I have 241 games. Pathetic isn't it.

 

[Mr_Ed]

Gaming on Mac is non-sensical. Even turning this on would crush the CPU even more.

Can’t speak to performance impact, but to those of us long time (30+ years for me) Apple customers driven away from gaming on Macs years ago, gaming on Macs does seem non-sensical.

A game doesn’t have to be AAA to be enjoyable.

This is absolutely true. And if you like to play non-AAA games (and there is nothing wrong with that), gaming on Macs probably isn’t such a bad proposition. But if you do try to delve popular AAA titles, even occasionally, it’s a different story. Hard to squad up with friends to play when the game won’t be available on Mac for a year or more, if at all. I know there are exceptions to this, but the availability delay (if the game comes to Mac at all) has been a rule on the Mac side now for many years.

As you may have guessed, I’ve been gaming on Windows for over a decade now and there is just no going back to Mac gaming for people like me. Under the most optimistic view of the future of Mac gaming we could possibly have (Apple works with developers to encourage growth, TONS of people who are likely to play AAA games buy Macs, more Windows computers running on ARM, etc.), I think it will still be many years before Mac is included in the list of target platforms by default along with Windows and consoles when a game publisher sets out to invest millions producing a new AAA game.

 

[im_to_hyper]

Vulkan support when?

Which Vulkan <-> Metal API?
Would Steam have to use its own MoltenVK implementation?
What else are we trying to support Valve to support?