New Steam Deck Beta Client Update Improves Game Recording and More

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A couple of weeks ago, Valve blindsided us all with the drop of their new Game Recording feature for Steam. It came out of nowhere, and even though there were hints it could come, it was still a major shock. And with it being usable on the Steam Deck, there is definitely a lot to look forward to, even if the feature isn't fully complete yet. But with today's beta client update, we are getting closer and closer to a full release.

With this update, we have some bug fixes for the feature, but we also have some nice improvements and additions that help elevate using the feature. There are better UI behavior when finalizing the beginning and end of cliups and default naming of clip files are better and improve readability and sorting. My favorite part of this update, however, is the ability to save a specific frame of a video as a Steam screenshot. I love that this has been added in, and it makes using the feature for both videos and screenshots much nicer.

The beta should be available now to download, but you have to make sure you are on the Steam Client Beta branch to get it. You can change your branch via the System Settings.

Steam Deck Beta Client 7/10/24 Update Changelog:

General

• Fixed a bug that could cause some local screenshots not to appear in the media manager, if the user had few screenshots saved to steam
• Fixed a bug that could delete a workshop file if the file had failed a file validation check and had been reacquired
• Fixed a bug that could leave some local screenshots undeleted after attempting to delete multiple at one time

Game Recording

• Improvements to UI behaviors when finalizing the beginning and end of a clip
• No longer warp the play head to the beginning/end of a clip when setting the beginning/end of a clip via the UI buttons
• Fixed a bug where using the hotkey to add a user marker would drop the marker at the wrong location
• Increased the minimum background recording time to 15 minutes, to give the user time to edit recent clips before the recorded video ages out
• Added a warning to the user if game recording has been turned off to prioritize broadcasting
• Ignore user marker shortcut key if game recording is disabled
• Added the ability to save a specific frame of a video as a steam screenshot
• Improved default naming of clip files to improve readability and sortability. Steam will also scan game state descriptions to apply to default clip filename, if available
• Fixed an exception thrown if the user canceled a clip save in the file picker dialog
• Updated message displayed when there is no recent other session where the user can send a clip

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