An easier way to buy games[Or find f2p games] that I can play.

[Kreuz]

It would be nice to add a feature that takes into account current hardware and minimum requirements like a box in the search function, hardware x,y,z in the search function will only show games that run on the hardware instead of showing up several games that are very above, or just above the "minimum requirement".

[76561199648916059]

Your looking on the wrong platform if your looking for quality pay games for free, you will never find games with price tags for free on steam, suggest you try others

[Kreuz]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Ben Lubar:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Kreuz:

check it: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/ or go to google.

The Steam Hardware Survey does not test any games for their performance. It simply generates statistics on what hardware people have.

Steam doesn't need to test anything, whether the game developer/publisher decided to put the data thoroughly tested or not as minimum requirements is their responsibility, what Steam needs to do is create a comparison table of the hardware you have in relation to what the publisher/developer posted it in the steam information, simple.

You just click on a button "I want to share hardware information" [assuming it exists after a possible implementation of the feature discussed] and they will have the information that your processor is y, your gpu is x and your ram is z, so they can compare with the minimum requirements provided by the publisher/developer and when you click on the supposed box that is supposed to be included in the search tool, called "minimum requirements" [or whatever name] then all the games that just meet the minimum requirements will appear, the even for a hypothetical "recommended requirements" function.

[Start_Running]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Morbid Eden:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Ben Lubar:

Valve does not have the data. Nobody has the data. Nobody has tested every game on every combination of hardware and software.

They have the data that the developer/publisher provides. Totally doable given that fact. Is it up to Valve to handhold anyone? No. Is it doable? Absolutely. I personally don't give a rats ass about such a feature, but someone new to PC gaming might.

That data is hardly comprehensive.
And thats sort of the issue. dev/pubs basically only know as muich as what machines THEY ran the game on. Not so much about what the game CAN run on. And tyhis becomes less reliable as tech advances.

They could make best guesses. but when your wrong guesses have the potential to cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars each... yeah... you're not gonna do much guessing.

As said. there's a reason NO STORE DOES THIS. and the sites that do it generally go to great lengths to avoid affilliation with ANY store.

Oprindeligt skrevet af Morbid Eden:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Ben Lubar:

The Steam Hardware Survey does not test any games for their performance. It simply generates statistics on what hardware people have.

It is a database along with what serious developers/publishers input as "minimum" or "recommended" can extrapolate from. It's far more than enough to implement a checking system within the Steam client and update the ToS to acknowledge it.

It is NOT impossible to do.

To do it a a reasonable level of certainty... yeah it kinda is .. for PC's anyway.
There's no universal standard for parts,. YOu han hav 10 different CPUs that have the same Posted speed but they will guive VASTLY different results in performance in various gaming scenarios.

It's even worse for GPUs.

When you have to pick between two doors and one of the doors leads to being brutally sodomized by a Polar Bear dosed to the gills on Viagra....yeah you are going to want a very high level of certainty before you open a door.

[Kreuz]

In addition to not needing to test anything, this supposed research tool that may or may not be added in the future is also not an obligation, but as every "consumer" wants what they "consume" to be more comfortable for their "consumption", I am here to help open this suggestion.

[Kreuz]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Start_Running:

That data is hardly comprehensive.
And thats sort of the issue. dev/pubs basically only know as muich as what machines THEY ran the game on. Not so much about what the game CAN run on. And tyhis becomes less reliable as tech advances.

They could make best guesses. but when your wrong guesses have the potential to cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars each... yeah... you're not gonna do much guessing.

As said. there's a reason NO STORE DOES THIS. and the sites that do it generally go to great lengths to avoid affilliation with ANY store.

To do it a a reasonable level of certainty... yeah it kinda is .. for PC's anyway.
There's no universal standard for parts,. YOu han hav 10 different CPUs that have the same Posted speed but they will guive VASTLY different results in performance in various gaming scenarios.

It's even worse for GPUs.

When you have to pick between two doors and one of the doors leads to being brutally sodomized by a Polar Bear dosed to the gills on Viagra....yeah you are going to want a very high level of certainty before you open a door.

Here is the reason why there is "beta tester", no matter the name, what matters is that they can launch a mass testing function and collect the necessary data easily by launching a Demo, or whatever, and will collect data easily [as long as players/testers don't need to pay to test, at least on the most popular games]

PS: this has nothing to do with the function mentioned in this topic, this is not Steam's responsibility if it adds it, but rather that of whoever posted the minimum requirements for the published game.

[Ben Lubar]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Kreuz:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Ben Lubar:

The Steam Hardware Survey does not test any games for their performance. It simply generates statistics on what hardware people have.

Steam doesn't need to test anything, whether the game developer/publisher decided to put the data thoroughly tested or not as minimum requirements is their responsibility, what Steam needs to do is create a comparison table of the hardware you have in relation to what the publisher/developer posted it in the steam information, simple.

You just click on a button "I want to share hardware information" [assuming it exists after a possible implementation of the feature discussed] and they will have the information that your processor is y, your gpu is x and your ram is z, so they can compare with the minimum requirement provided by the publisher/developer.

Determining what hardware the computer is running isn't the hard part. The hard part is comparing data about what GPU I have with completely arbitrary text entered in an informal context by the developer.

Even if we exclude jokes like Scribble Space, there are an unbounded number of possible ways to describe the minimum GPU a game requires. And GPUs aren't directly comparable like that anyway. A GeForce RTX 3060 has more VRAM than a GeForce RTX 3070 but less of basically everything else.

When the developer writes minimum requirements, they are giving an example of a machine that can run their game. They are not stating the absolute minimum hardware that the game will run on. Alien Swarm requires Shader Model 3.0 for some shaders, but I was able to run it on my ATI X600 in 2010 when it came out despite that card not even supporting Shader Model 2.0b.

If your computer has a processor and has a graphics card, you can run any game that doesn't explicitly require something specific like hardware raytracing support.

Here's another example: Half-Life 2 lists these minimum requirements:

OS: Windows 7, Vista, XP
Processor: 1.7 Ghz
Memory: 512 MB RAM
Graphics: DirectX 8.1 level Graphics Card (requires support for SSE)
Storage: 6500 MB available space

I'm pretty sure you can't even run Steam on a system that doesn't meet these requirements. There's not a single CPU that participated in the Steam Hardware Survey that doesn't have support for SSE. And if you download Half-Life 2 in French, Spanish, Russian, German, Korean, Chinese, or Italian, it uses more than the listed 6.5 gigabytes of space.

Additionally, you would struggle to run Steam on a system with only half a gigabyte of RAM, and 1.7 Gigahertz doesn't mean anything about a processor's speed because every processor architecture documents a different number of cycles for each instruction.

The system requirements are suggestions, not a promise that your system will be able to run the game well if it hits the exact specs listed or a promise that your system won't be able to run the game well if it doesn't.

---

Here's a much simpler system than trying to deal with all that:

If you're looking at a game that doesn't pride itself on being hardware-taxing (for example, Portal with RTX or Crysis when it first released), you can probably run it.

It's that simple. "Can I run this game with my hardware?" Probably. Unless you're using a computer from a computing history museum that can't run Steam, you can probably run whatever game you're looking at.

And if you can't, refunds are always available for stuff that won't run on your computer. (Assuming it took you less than 2 hours of having the game open and less than 14 days of owning the game to find out it just flat out won't run.) No questions asked. And if it's a free game, you don't even need to wait for a refund. Just delete it and move on if you can't run it.

---

If you're interested in a game and don't know whether it'll run on your system, there's one surefire way to find out.

And that's to run it on your system and see with your own eyes whether it's running well enough to keep.

Anything short of that is just guessing, and a guess starting from a vague statement about the kind of hardware a game has been tested on is at best going to give you a vague answer.

[Start_Running]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Kreuz:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Start_Running:

That data is hardly comprehensive.
And thats sort of the issue. dev/pubs basically only know as muich as what machines THEY ran the game on. Not so much about what the game CAN run on. And tyhis becomes less reliable as tech advances.

They could make best guesses. but when your wrong guesses have the potential to cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars each... yeah... you're not gonna do much guessing.

As said. there's a reason NO STORE DOES THIS. and the sites that do it generally go to great lengths to avoid affilliation with ANY store.

To do it a a reasonable level of certainty... yeah it kinda is .. for PC's anyway.
There's no universal standard for parts,. YOu han hav 10 different CPUs that have the same Posted speed but they will guive VASTLY different results in performance in various gaming scenarios.

It's even worse for GPUs.

When you have to pick between two doors and one of the doors leads to being brutally sodomized by a Polar Bear dosed to the gills on Viagra....yeah you are going to want a very high level of certainty before you open a door.

Here is the reason why there is "beta tester", no matter the name, what matters is that they can launch a mass testing function and collect the necessary data easily by launching a Demo, or whatever, and will collect data easily [as long as players/testers don't need to pay to test, at least on the most popular games]

Been tried. Literawlly didn't work.
Let me put it this way. MICROSOFT couldn't make it work. THe COmpany that has access to all the information there is to be had a about a system couldn't find a way to make such a thing work.

And No Beta testing isn't gonna work simply because there are waaaaay too many permutations of current hardware, and even more so when it comes to yet to be released hardware.

You can as said make a guess. but even a 95% success rate is insuffecient when each wrong guess can net you a a $100K fine.

[Leonardo Da Pinchi]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Start_Running:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Kreuz:

Here is the reason why there is "beta tester", no matter the name, what matters is that they can launch a mass testing function and collect the necessary data easily by launching a Demo, or whatever, and will collect data easily [as long as players/testers don't need to pay to test, at least on the most popular games]

Been tried. Literawlly didn't work.
Let me put it this way. MICROSOFT couldn't make it work. THe COmpany that has access to all the information there is to be had a about a system couldn't find a way to make such a thing work.

And No Beta testing isn't gonna work simply because there are waaaaay too many permutations of current hardware, and even more so when it comes to yet to be released hardware.

You can as said make a guess. but even a 95% success rate is insuffecient when each wrong guess can net you a a $100K fine.

The primary reason behind this is that even if someone had the hardware to support a game, that says nothing about their software, configurations, etc. Which are diverse, to say the least.

[Kreuz]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Ben Lubar:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Kreuz:

Steam doesn't need to test anything, whether the game developer/publisher decided to put the data thoroughly tested or not as minimum requirements is their responsibility, what Steam needs to do is create a comparison table of the hardware you have in relation to what the publisher/developer posted it in the steam information, simple.

You just click on a button "I want to share hardware information" [assuming it exists after a possible implementation of the feature discussed] and they will have the information that your processor is y, your gpu is x and your ram is z, so they can compare with the minimum requirement provided by the publisher/developer.

Determining what hardware the computer is running isn't the hard part. The hard part is comparing data about what GPU I have with completely arbitrary text entered in an informal context by the developer.

Even if we exclude jokes like Scribble Space, there are an unbounded number of possible ways to describe the minimum GPU a game requires. And GPUs aren't directly comparable like that anyway. A GeForce RTX 3060 has more VRAM than a GeForce RTX 3070 but less of basically everything else.

When the developer writes minimum requirements, they are giving an example of a machine that can run their game. They are not stating the absolute minimum hardware that the game will run on. Alien Swarm requires Shader Model 3.0 for some shaders, but I was able to run it on my ATI X600 in 2010 when it came out despite that card not even supporting Shader Model 2.0b.

If your computer has a processor and has a graphics card, you can run any game that doesn't explicitly require something specific like hardware raytracing support.

Here's another example: Half-Life 2 lists these minimum requirements:

OS: Windows 7, Vista, XP
Processor: 1.7 Ghz
Memory: 512 MB RAM
Graphics: DirectX 8.1 level Graphics Card (requires support for SSE)
Storage: 6500 MB available space

I'm pretty sure you can't even run Steam on a system that doesn't meet these requirements. There's not a single CPU that participated in the Steam Hardware Survey that doesn't have support for SSE. And if you download Half-Life 2 in French, Spanish, Russian, German, Korean, Chinese, or Italian, it uses more than the listed 6.5 gigabytes of space.

Additionally, you would struggle to run Steam on a system with only half a gigabyte of RAM, and 1.7 Gigahertz doesn't mean anything about a processor's speed because every processor architecture documents a different number of cycles for each instruction.

The system requirements are suggestions, not a promise that your system will be able to run the game well if it hits the exact specs listed or a promise that your system won't be able to run the game well if it doesn't.

---

Here's a much simpler system than trying to deal with all that:

If you're looking at a game that doesn't pride itself on being hardware-taxing (for example, Portal with RTX or Crysis when it first released), you can probably run it.

It's that simple. "Can I run this game with my hardware?" Probably. Unless you're using a computer from a computing history museum that can't run Steam, you can probably run whatever game you're looking at.

And if you can't, refunds are always available for stuff that won't run on your computer. (Assuming it took you less than 2 hours of having the game open and less than 14 days of owning the game to find out it just flat out won't run.) No questions asked. And if it's a free game, you don't even need to wait for a refund. Just delete it and move on if you can't run it.

---

If you're interested in a game and don't know whether it'll run on your system, there's one surefire way to find out.

And that's to run it on your system and see with your own eyes whether it's running well enough to keep.

Anything short of that is just guessing, and a guess starting from a vague statement about the kind of hardware a game has been tested on is at best going to give you a vague answer.

And what does this have to do with a tool that provides convenience to the consumer?

The tool is to help filter large amounts of games that do not meet the requirement, or meet the requirement and reach the "minimum" or "recommended".

If you are going to look for a game in the list of dozens, hundreds or even thousands with the tag you want, and you want it to meet the "recommended" you will open each game to see the minimum/recommended requirements, but with a simple function you can save time, well something I'll do now, I've already wasted a lot of time saying why a "requirements" tool is better than me opening every game that looks cool to see its hardware requirements.

[Start_Running]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Leonardo Da Pinchi:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Start_Running:

Been tried. Literawlly didn't work.
Let me put it this way. MICROSOFT couldn't make it work. THe COmpany that has access to all the information there is to be had a about a system couldn't find a way to make such a thing work.

And No Beta testing isn't gonna work simply because there are waaaaay too many permutations of current hardware, and even more so when it comes to yet to be released hardware.

You can as said make a guess. but even a 95% success rate is insuffecient when each wrong guess can net you a a $100K fine.

The primary reason behind this is that even if someone had the hardware to support a game, that says nothing about their software, configurations, etc. Which are diverse, to say the least.

The hard ware is already a big variance.
There some low spec hardware that can punch way above it's weight class and high speced hardware that on paper and in benchmarks performs wekll but in realworld aopplications perform terribly.

Hardware Maintenance is another factor and rthen software adds another dimension of problems. And thats before you consider the question of what sort of performance one can get at minnumum or recommended.

I've seen games where minimum just means the game won't crash to blue screen but you'll be rocking a frame rate hjust shy of a power point opresentation

[Tito Shivan]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Morbid Eden:

To be honest, Valve already has the data and it CAN be done.

Actually, d3str0y3r posted a pretty good example of the biggest problem that exists with the 'data' Steam has.

Oprindeligt skrevet af d3str0y3r:

Processor: the metal part of a toaster when its being heated
Graphics: the thing that heats the metal part of the toaster
Sound Card: something that makes pretty noises

Now try compare that with your own hardware stats.

The thing is hardware requirements in Steam are basically free text fields. They are great for conveying information on a human readable format. But from a data quality standpoint they're horrendous for any attempt at doing any analytics job with them.

You have the GPU hardware referred in multiple ways:

Nvidia RTX 3080
Nvidia 3000 series
Nvidia 3XXX
Any GPU from 2020 or after.
8Gb of VRam

Trying to make a unified dataset of that is hell on earth. And all of that to have people complaining the game stutters or has framedrops on the hardware Steam totally said the game would work on.

[Nx Machina]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Morbid Eden:

To be honest, Valve already has the data and it CAN be done. I doubt Gabe Newell would want someone possibly new to computers in general to be shunned.

Valve does not have the data as they do not scan the numerous PC configs of users actually playing the same game to quantify performance.

Performance can be affected by realtime antivirus scanning, bad graphic driver, bad audio driver, a borked Windows update, malware, failing hardware etc.

I have Deathloop and my cpu is below the minimum spec yet i have zero issues playing the game, whilst someone on a higher spec PC may complain about issues.

And finally there is no standard end user configuration PC, hence why there is no tool, and why Microsoft abandoned their own tool on Windows as it was useless.

[Anonymous Helper]

Not to mention "can I run it" and "is game playable on" are two vastly different things. As has been mentioned already, most hardware today can RUN most games out there but most people wouldn't call single digit FPS performance playable. But it runs right?

The problem with playability obviously is that everyone defines playable differently even among developers let alone games.