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That, coupled with how inaccurate such sites are, could cause a lot of issues. Those sites only check your hardware and drivers and even manufacturer of each card (not all GTX970s are created equal) . They can't account for other applications or configurations on your system. They can't check you PSU to make sure it supplies enough voltage or the cooling in your system, not to mention all the other out-side factors.
People would complain about the system.
It isn't like those are all tested either, they just go by the hardware requirements and match that to your system.
It isn't hard to learn one's system specs and compare them to what is in the store's page.
The second problem is that if Valve implemented such a system in Steam then users would think that it offered some guarantee on how a game would perform when it doesn't and can't do that. That would lead to an awful lot of complaints as it would be a huge mess.
Display the following on the game spec section;
Disclaimer, these check might not be 100% accurate.
System check estimate:
Game spec -> your spec = Results
Then say "This is just a rough guess or estimated comparison made against your PC. It is your choice whether you want to proceed to use/buy this game".
Assassins Creed 3 runs well on my PC but AC2 brotherhood doesn't even though one site said neither would run and another said AC2 would run. So I know very well these sites aren't that accurate but they have been right most of the time. Valve could possibly create a better system check than those sites and just use it to give users a rough estimate on spec comparison alone and also put a disclaimer with it stating that its just a spec comparison and any other user made tweaks or other hardware is not included in the evaluation.
Anyway as things currently stand Valve does not have such a feature implemented so what methods are other people using in deciding which game to buy/download? If you consider that and lets say Valve releases a beta version of such a feature then they could have a feedback button or something where users can say whether a game works even though the check says it won't and also to state how they got it to work, if they used tweaks or something like that in order to better adjust and tweak the system check to make it a bit more accurate. Also during the beta or full implementation of the feature the disclaimer would still be there so people would still be able to use their own method on deciding which game to buy/download or not.
So just take a little time to learn thy specs. It'd take you only an hour to figure it out.
Very bad idea since such a system would never be 100% accurate and that would make liable to buyers and publisher lawsuits.
Still not enough since again publishers can more or less sue for misrepresentation of their products.
Hence why the better alternative is for you to just learn
And something that is not accurate may harm the buisness, not help it.
A better mothod would lead to privacy concerns and complaints as you would have to send a lot more information.
A disclaimer won't prevent complaints or resentment for a game not being able to run when the system states it could, especialy if a user goes past the refund time limit trying to get it it work, because the system says it should run.
Most people know their system specs and go by that.
Most people have no idea whats inside their PC's, and giving those people a tool for determining whether their PC's fulfill the "minimum" or "recommended" requirements would be a good thing.
The current requirements appear very short and simple, but comparing different GPU and CPU generations is not so simple.
Example: Is a gtx1050 better than a gtx970m? What about a 1030ti?
Example: Is a core i5 8500 better than a core i7 3700k?
I can't answer that without looking for some benchmarks, and I'm pretty good about these things.
How could it work?
The steam-cliant already knows what hardware you have.
Where the current requirements are listed, at the bottom of the store page, should be a table with three columns:
To the left "Current PC's configuration", then "Minimum requirements" and last "Recommended requirements".
In each column the characteristics are lined up, so it's easy to compare your PC to the requirements.
Operating System:
Processor:
Memory:
Graphics:
DirectX:
Storage:
Soundcard:
If your PC's CPU is "equal or better" to the "minimum CPU", there appears a green checkmark on the CPU requirement in the "minimum requirements" column, otherwise a red cross.
If your PC's CPU is "equal or better" to the "recommended CPU", there appears a green checkmark on the CPU in the "recommended column", otherwise a red cross.
Memory - compare, and put either a green chackmark or a red cross next to it.
GPU - compare etc.
and so on...
The data needed to be able to compare CPU vs CPU and GPU vs GPU will be licensed from one of the common benchmarks. (3dmark/Futuremark for example have data for pretty much all CPU's and GPU's)
So steam would not benchmark the games or the users PC.
The publishers have already decided what hardware their games need, and steam would just make it easier for people who aren't tech-savvy to decode whether they match the requirements or not.
See now that is a possibility, because it just compares the hardware and states whether each hardware is = / > / < the minimum and recommended spec for a game. It's not exactly saying that a users PC cannot run a game.
No, it doesn't. And that's a problem. There are still users who report their hardware is not recognized correctly. Common issue is with Nvidia cards in Optimo mode. Steam never picked up my card and instead always sees the Intel integrated graphics - because I don't need a high power GPU in desktop mode.
Steam also doesn't know the speccs for games, because it is free text. "A potato", "Something from this century", "two fingers" compares badly to a benchmark. As does "DirectX 9.0c supporting", "Shader Model 3.0".
Steam slo doesn't know how the game performs with the recommended or minimum hardware. Some developers just put the lowest configuration they have tested the game on, which might be total overkill. Some developers list the absolut minim to get the game to boot.
And lastly Steam doesn't know what you deem playable. Is 800x600 with 30 FPS enough for you? Or do you need 4k with all sliders maxed while also recording?
---
If you spend hundreds of dollars on hardware and games, you should probably start to get interested in what you actually spend the money for. Most people look for a pretty good reason to spend a tenner more on anything, but have no problem spending a couple hundreds on a computer. And then wonder why their 500 dollar machine with a 920 GT cannot run PUBG.
Can You Run It [www.systemrequirementslab.com]