Summary
- SteelSeries GG is an alternative to Shadowplay, and it’s better than NVIDIA’s software in almost every way.
- GG offers better audio control, clip editing within the application, and you don’t need a SteelSeries product to download it.
- There are some quirks with the software, such as finicky auto-clipping and Windows Audio occasionally messing with Sonar.
NVIDIA Shadowplay may seem like the only application available for clipping gameplay, but there is a better solution.
I really don’t like NVIDIA Shadowplay. While it’s meant to make it easy to clip your gaming sessions, I’ve had nothing but nightmares with the GPU company’s app heature. Fighting the audio recording is a pain. It’ll randomly turn off without warning, and sometimes it just doesn’t work.
Despite all this, Shadowplay is still considered the de facto clipping software. Other applications like OBS aren’t made for quick clips, and not everyone wants to stream on Twitch, so NVIDIA’s frustrating software seems to be the only solution—but it isn’t.
SteelSeries GG is a Perfect Replacement
SteelSeries, like most gaming peripheral manufacturers, has software to download to use its products to the fullest. To me, this is often annoying, as who wants to download another application you won’t use? This time, however, I’m thankful I downloaded SteelSeries GG after picking up a gaming headset from them.
This application has a few features, like Sonar, which works similarly to a mixer like a GoXLR, but the real standout with GG is Moments. Moments is SteelSeries’ clipping feature, and it provides a plethora of options you don’t see on Shadowplay.
For one, Moments uses the aforementioned Sonar feature to record sound, so you have a lot of control over the audio channels GG is capturing—and as such, makes it less likely to run into audio failures you can’t diagnose. Given how often I have to fight Windows’ audio settings to make sure it works correctly, I’m appreciative of an application that isn’t as hard to wrangle overall.
There are also a variety of video options available for your clips, including how long you want a clip to be, the resolution, and so on. I personally like doing 5-minute clips at 30 FPS, which makes it easier to review gameplay from something like raiding or a match in a multiplayer game, but someone looking to share gameplay moments on social media may want shorter clips at 60 FPS. The options are there, regardless of what you’re taking the clips for.
You can also edit and export clips within the GG app itself, which is incredibly helpful. In the editor, you can trim the clip and adjust the audio mix to your liking. While the editor is a bit barebones, it’s more than enough for quick clips. So you don’t need to open something like Clipchamp, unless you want some more advanced editing features.
It’s Not Without Its Quirks
Of course, SteelSeries GG may be a perfect replacement for NVIDIA Shadowplay, but it’s not a perfect application overall. For one, if you want to do desktop capture (the only way to take clips without an active game open), you need to re-enable it every time you restart your computer, and likely disable it when you start up a game. It’s frustrating, though ultimately not a big deal since desktop capture isn’t something that’d be commonly used to clip games.
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Also, the auto-clipping mode is very finicky. It’s meant to clip gameplay anytime something ‘exciting’ happens onscreen, but the ‘excitement’ is generally gauged by the volume of your or someone else’s voice. Given that I have louder friends in voice chat, and sometimes I speak louder to give people directions during a game, GG’s auto-clipping would go off constantly—sometimes more than once a minute. Most of the time, the captured moments weren’t exciting; it was just us playing the game. Sifting through that many clips to find the ones I manually clipped is no fun, so I quickly turned this feature off.
But the biggest issue I’ve run into is missing audio while clipping. From time to time, my audio settings will reset, and that usually means that I’ll get one channel of audio—usually my Discord voice chat—but not the others, such as game audio and my microphone.
Admittedly, this isn’t something that is wholly SteelSeries’ fault, as it was usually Windows sound settings being reverted after an update (or because Windows 11 felt like it). However, GG doesn’t give you much of a notice if something is off with your audio recording.
Sonar will throw up a small caution icon if an audio channel appears to be disconnected. However, there’s no notification eye-catching enough to catch it unless you’re looking specifically at that menu, which most of the time you won’t be. I’m the type to clip a lot of videos and go through them a week or two later, so it can be disappointing when an audio channel wasn’t being picked up and I have a streak of clips that are unusable.
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However, most people aren’t going to wait that long to look through clips, but it can be disappointing to find out a day or so’s worth of clips didn’t record correctly.
Steelseries GG is a completely free application—you don’t need to purchase a SteelSeries product to download. So, there’s no reason not to give it a try, even if you eventually return to Shadowplay—although you’ll likely leave NVIDIA’s clipping software for good.
SteelSeries Arctis Nova 1
SteelSeries is well-known for producing excellent gaming peripherals, and the Arctis Nova 1 headset is no exception. While it sits firmly at the budget end in terms of pricing, it doesn’t scrimp on audio quality, comfort, and gaming QOL features.
