Why doesn't the Steam Overlay support video capture?

[Wowee! 🍰]

In communities, you can easily share screenshots through the steam overlay with the F12 key. But no way to share videos unless you record and upload them outside of steam? Seems pretty lacking.

The broadcast system is nice, suprsingly simple and up to date. Although, there's no way to save those broadcasts. The screenshot feature has easily been one of steams highlights for me, I just wish it could be expanded upon to video recording, working like the broadcast feature but saving your footage or clip instead of it only being viewable live.

Now, I'm aware, there's TONS of ways to record steam games outside of steam. But why shouldn't it be simple and streamlined? Take the Xbox capture system, for example. In the middle of a match I can easily start a video, or capture the previous 15 seconds to 10 minutes. It works incredibly whenever I do something cool, that I'd like to clip and share with my friends. I'm quite sure PS4 has a similar system as well.

So, why not steam? Especially with the new chat update. I could record a clip in steam, and send it to a friend through steam, without any hassle at all. Or save it for later, and post it on the internet. It seems steam could really use a feature like that.

[999999999]

Use OBS, Nvidia ShadowPlay, AMD ReLive or other software.

[999999999]

Who's going to pay for the extra space to house all these videos?

Local saves too?

How much can each user save to the cloud?

For screenshots and artwork together, there is an 18.7GB limit.

[999999999]

Valve does this for CS. The demo system. I'm sure other developers can do the same for their games if they wish.

[aiusepsi]

I've been wondering the same thing myself. They've got all the bits necessary to make it work: game video capture from broadcasting / streaming, Steam Cloud and UGC support, a fairly decent HTML5 video player...

Making it a proper Steam feature would mostly be gluing the bits together. It's weird that they've not done it.

[Grady Vuckovic]

2021, sitting here wondering the same thing OP. Come on Valve, surely you're overdue for this?

[[?]legit]

Would be really nice, especially if you could upload it directly to your steam account.

[76561198407601200]

First issue is it would make the steam client rather bulky. If you want it to record something decent, it won't just be a small addition. Alternatively you could use the broadcasting feature, though it won't record. To combat the bulkiness of the addition, it could be a separate program to install for those to opt in, but then that seems rather pointless since it would be the same as having such as obs running. Either case won't result in less resources being used and even if valve were able to make a separate program to record, why would they? There are already many programs to achieve this that are tried and true, valve would be wasting resources working on that.

Second issue is sharing said recording. If it has only sharing and not uploading as a feature, it would need to allow the chat to send videos. Not confident they would allow that, but who knows. Uploading would of course require server space which I'm sure Valve has no problem in footing the bill for.

[Mikoto]

Originally posted by Grady Vuckovic:

2021, sitting here wondering the same thing OP. Come on Valve, surely you're overdue for this?

Read and address the previous replies from 3 years ago before attempting to revive a topic. The answers from then are just as relevant today.

[Dane patten]

it should have an option to record, for example like nvidia overlay, especially for the poeple that dont have nvidia cards, its hard to clip things, and record with a press of a key.

[Eizan Taihen]

this would make sense now with steam deck