Why We Built Replayd (And What We Think Is Wrong With Game Recording)
I spent 3 years clipping with broken tools
Before building Replayd, I used every clip recorder that exists. OBS for a year, Medal for almost two, ShadowPlay on and off, Outplayed for a few months. They all had the same pattern — great at one thing, terrible at everything else.
OBS can do anything but it takes 20 minutes to set up replay buffer and the UI looks like it was designed by an audio engineer in 2012. Medal is slick but keeps trying to be TikTok for gamers when I just want to save a clip. ShadowPlay is dead simple but gives you a raw file and says "good luck editing that."
The thing that finally made me snap was this: I hit a 1v5 ace in Valorant, clipped it with Medal, opened Premiere to add text and music, spent 40 minutes exporting, uploaded to Streamable, and the link died in 30 days.
Forty-five minutes. For a 12-second clip.
The problem is that recording and editing are separate
Every game recorder treats editing as someone else's problem. They give you a video file and assume you have Premiere, DaVinci Resolve, or at least CapCut sitting around. For short gaming clips, that workflow is absurd.
You don't need 4K color grading for a Rocket League goal. You need to trim 3 seconds off the front, slap "WHAT A SAVE" on it, and send it to Discord. That should take 30 seconds, not 30 minutes.
The recording apps that DO have editors mostly just have trim handles. That's not editing. That's cropping.
What we actually built
Replayd is a replay buffer + clip recorder + video editor in one app. The recording side uses the same native GPU capture APIs that Windows itself uses — DXGI and WinRT Graphics Capture. Your GPU's dedicated encoder (NVENC, AMF, or QuickSync) handles the encoding. The game doesn't even know we're there.
The editor side is the part we spent the most time on. It's a real multi-track timeline:
- Text overlays with animated presets (impact text, animated titles, subtitles)
- Meme images with automatic green screen removal — drag a meme onto your clip and it just works
- SoundCloud music search built in — find a beat, drag it to the timeline
- Sound effects — hit markers, bass drops, whoosh sounds, the classics
- Visual effects — slow motion, zoom, shake, vignette, color filters
- Transitions — 20 transition styles between clips for montages
Export uses WebCodecs with GPU-accelerated encoding. A 15-second clip exports in a few seconds on decent hardware. Then you click "Create Link" and get a shareable URL instantly.
Auto game detection across 5,000+ games
One thing that always annoyed me about other recorders is having to tell them what game you're playing. Replayd ships with a database of over 5,000 games. When you launch a game, we detect it automatically, start the replay buffer, and tag your clips with the game name and artwork.
The database updates over the air so new games get added without needing an app update.
Where we're at now
We're in beta. The core loop — record, edit, share — works well. We're shipping updates weekly. The app auto-updates so you always have the latest version.
It's free. Actual free — 1080p recording, full editor access, no watermark. The Pro tier adds 4K recording, GPU-accelerated export, and cloud sync. But the free tier is a complete product, not a demo.
If you've been frustrated with the same tools I was frustrated with, give it a shot.