Valve disabled the native demo recording feature in CS2 at the beginning of October, leaving thousands of players wondering how to rewatch their matches. If you want to keep your highlights, review your plays, or check if anybody was cheating, there are some workarounds the community is currently using.
Though CS2 isn’t automatically recording matches at the moment, you can record them manually through a command in the game’s developer console. When a match starts, open the console and type “record demoname”, replacing “demoname” with the actual name you want to attribute to that recording, and type stop whenever you want to spot the recording.
Though some users faced bugs when using this manual command, myself included, the community found out that if you start recording only after the warmup period ends, you won’t come across any weird in-game bugs. I personally tested this in a couple of matches myself and it worked.
If this console method isn’t working for you, the best alternative is to use third-party software to record your matches until Valve enables the feature again. I’ve successfully used OBS to record CS:GO matches in the past, a program that is most notably used by Twitch streamers and YouTubers.
While I’ve never tried third-party software other than OBS in recent times, Redditors recommended CS2 players use NVIDIA Shadowplay or SteelSeries Moments. The latter, for example, automatically records multikills and headshots for you, if the program is open when you’re playing CS2.
The only problem with any third-party recording software is that it will most likely reduce whatever fps you’re getting in CS2, because they’re heavy on the PC. CS2 already is demanding a lot from the CPU and GPU in general, and you might not want to use those programs if you’re already getting low fps.
For now, these are some of the best alternatives you can use to record your own CS2 matches until Valve starts to automatically record demos once again, like it did in CS:GO.
