Please support Game Informer. Print magazine subscriptions are less than $2 per issue
Forge Is A Free App That Lets You Record And Share Your PC Gaming Moments
If you’ve played games on either Xbox One or PlayStation 4, you might have dabbled with gameplay capture. Both consoles have the feature baked-in, meaning you don’t need an external capture device to share your best (or worst) moments.
Today, there’s a solution that works similarly on PC. Forge is a free app (now in beta) that runs in the background while you play.
It captures games from a variety of services, stores your footage, and allows you to make short, looping clips. The process is fast, with sharing to both Forge and Twitter instantaneous.
Die, Azmodan, Die https://t.co/VLDG5JgP9t pic.twitter.com/Fng8K8eqEK
— Michael Futter (@Futterish) February 24, 2016
I spent a bit of time with the app while I was playing Diablo III. The hour of footage it captured while I was completing season bounties was waiting for me when I left the game.
In total, it took me about two minutes to create each of the clips you see on this page. Had I used the bookmarking feature (a single button press while playing), I could have reduced that even more by knowing exactly where these two clips were in the 67-minute video.
Forge is still in beta, and there are features I’d like to see added. Chief among them is a one-button screenshot feature. If you’re using Steam, you already have that across the service. However, if you drift over to Battle.net, GOG, Origin, or Uplay, you might suddenly find yourself without your trusty F12 button at the ready.
https://t.co/dXYasEksRA pic.twitter.com/hmjpVYfitI
— Michael Futter (@Futterish) February 24, 2016
At this time there also is no support for camera or custom overlays. That means that you won’t be able to include reaction shots as they occurred in real-time or personal branding. However, both are mentioned in the Forge FAQ, so there’s hope.
In my brief time with the service, I was impressed by what Forge (official website) has to offer. It’s still clearly a work in progress, but the groundwork is there to give PC users the ease of use of Xbox One’s “Record That” or the PS4’s Share button.
I’d like to ask you to support Game Informer’s continued coverage of games with a subscription. For less than two dollars per issue, we mail you a full year of 10 print magazines, each with cover stories and preview features filled with exclusive details about the most exciting upcoming games. We profile and interview game creators. We look back on the rich history of gaming, and we celebrate what’s next.
Here on the website, we offer much of our content for free, including game reviews, daily news, videos, event coverage, and more – all with minimal ads.
We do so with a small editorial team, alongside contributing paid writers from around the world – over 65 individuals from 9 countries around the world, just in the last couple of years.
It’s not possible without support.
In a time when game makers and games coverage have faced hard struggles and layoffs, the future of this 30+ year magazine and community is at risk. Our new standalone magazine subscription is the number one way you can keep us alive – and we believe you’ll get a pretty fantastic gaming magazine in your mailbox every few weeks for your trouble.
Thank you.
