Steam's in-game recording feature has a lot going for it, making it a welcome addition to the app. However, with other, more established game-recording apps on the market, gamers have a lot of choices — with each app offering its own benefits.

While I've tried Steam's feature since it was first launched as a beta, at the end of the day, I prefer to use Outplayed instead.

How Outplayed outperforms Steam's game recording feature

Its biggest strength is its ease of use

Outplayed is a free video-capturing app from Overwolf that can record game highlights as well as full sessions. What makes it stand out is its ease of use. The setup process is simple, immediately taking you through various settings such as capture quality and frame rate. From the get-go, it allows you to set how much space you want to set aside for recordings, where you want to save these recordings, and what hotkeys you want to assign to manage recordings.

It also makes it apparent that you can tweak your recording settings for each game rather than burying these settings.

On the other hand, other game-recording apps, including Steam, have a less straightforward setup process. For example, on Steam, you first need to enable recording in the background before accessing settings for specific games. Had I not specifically looked into the best features of Steam's in-game recording, I would never have known those settings were there because I had enabled manual recording instead.

Using Outplayed is also incredibly intuitive, and the app settings allow you to tweak the recording process according to your specific usage style. For example, I often forget to start recording, so having Outplayed automatically start recording a full session is helpful for me. With the full session recording, the game also sets bookmarks according to specific highlight events such as kills, deaths, and assists. You can also save space by only capturing highlights rather than full game sessions.

Other benefits of Outplayed

For a free app, it has a lot of perks

I've tried various game-recording apps, but Outplayed has the best features for me. First, it has broad game support, from competitive PvP titles to more casual PvE titles. It isn't limited by which graphics card you're using or which game launcher you're using. So, if you're playing Valorant or Fortnite, you can still record the game — but Steam only supports games that are launched on Steam.

One of the biggest perks of Outplayed is the ability to review and edit your clips after playing, as well as creating new video projects with the in-app video editor. With many other game-recording apps, you need to use a video editor to do simple things like trimming a clip. There are plenty of free video editors available, but having the tools readily available when you view your videos adds an extra element of convenience.

You can also generate a link to share your Outplayed clips, so long as they're under 400MB. Longer clips can be uploaded directly to video-sharing platforms like YouTube and TikTok.

Steam also has the ability to create clips after you open your recorded videos. Still, I've frequently run into issues exporting these videos as links or copying them to my clipboard. There also isn't a central window where you can view all of your captured gameplay — you have to go to the game in your library and view the recordings and screenshots for that specific game.

Steam does excel in certain areas

I can see why some gamers use it

Some may argue that Steam's integrated game capture is better than the alternatives. After all, it's built into the game launcher, free without ads, and has a good level of customization. It can also detect Steam-specific highlights, such as Steam achievements.

There are also a few drawbacks to Outplayed. For example, there's no global setting to disable game recording. You have to disable recording for specific games.

I also found that both recording apps affected my games' performance, causing a lower frame rate and more stuttering. This is a drawback for both, as I found that video recording apps like OBS Studio do not have the same issue. That's one of the reasons OBS is great for streaming and recording games.

Outplayed wins out in the end for me

Both apps are useful tools for recording game highlights — the ability to record highlights is the main reason I use these tools over OBS. But in the end, Outplayed wins the battle for me thanks to its convenience and ease of use and the ability to record games you can't launch through Steam.

If you're not familiar with recording apps and want something that's extremely user-friendly and free, Outplayed is a great choice.