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Deciding if a game works is a far from trivial decision from a technical standpoint.
It puts the 'blame' of the choice on Valve, not the user.
Your Steam account can be used in any computer you want. What may work on a machine may not work on another.
In short, from Valve's side, it's too complicated and not worth it.
between this, and we are talking about "PC games" where every user is expected to intrinsically know their system specs, or can easily find them the idea of manually comparing the info is not considered that difficult.
then think about this too: I can browse the Steam store on my smartphone, and purchase games for one of my 2 computers that I have Steam installed on. when I run this "test" which system is it testing against? the system that I am browsing the store on, or one of the other registered systems. then what if I am buying a game for a friend (to give as gift) then either this test would have to break into their system, and scan it (invasion of privacy), or it would have to maintain their settings (which is data logging, and a version of stocking)
either way either learn your system specs of what you intend to play this game on, or look it up when you have a question.
I always thought it would be helpful if you could first download a demo of whatever game you would like to buy so you could see how it performs on your computer.
Why would you run a "can i run it" from your phone, or any other place besides the PC your playing it from....
if this were only viable through the Steam App then it makes a little more sense (for reason to be stated soon) as it already knows that you are likely to be playing the game from it, but there is still a chance of not.
the reason this would only really be acceptable from the Steam App is that it would require that the systems hardware specifications are to be given to the requester (under a Windows paradigm this is supposed to be unfeasible to uninstalled things), then there is also the consideration again that the steam library can be accessed from any computer steam app is installed on so by nature this test is only applicable from the system that is making the purchase, and it would really be a better idea to have a series of drop-downs for each different component (this is just a QA nightmare waiting to happen.
because you need to realize what those "will this run on my system" is really based on a big misconception (even by the hardcore PC gamer market) is that those "requirements/recommendations" are based off of 1-3 different builds that were QA tested against as "targets" essentially saying "we want it to at least play on this" so they test it, and then they usually slap the highest available on the market as "recommendations", and because they never tested against lower hardware there is an off-chance it can work (depends on if they made specific options that only work on a min tech, but that is a much longer drawn out discussion then I want to get into here)
not to mention if it is a game/application that has higher requirements, and is not playable from the current system specs you now have a milestone to hit during your next upgrade.
there were more then a few times that I upgraded my system specifically to the "recommended specs" of a game.
then there is the "purchase as a gift" option which this check becomes so irrelevant it is not even funny to have it on the site (unless it is just a series of drop-downs again nightmare, and misconception based),
so in reality the PC market exists as a "you should know what your hardware specs are, and what they can possibly do" the test would be nice, but unfeasible, and beside likely edge cases (user has 1 system that they ever access Steam from, and play games from) it is impracticable to boot.
because system requirements are actually only based off of "test systems" there might actually be cases where the application runs on lower hardware then listed (unless that tech is a minimum for very explicit reasons, and that usually only has to do directly with graphics) otherwise it might actually work on lower tech just not that well, but the only way to know for absolutely sure is either to build/buy the system to "required/recommended" specs, or just try it.
technically the demo sub-suggestion is more reasonable then this. because what are you expecting the test to do check to see how you current setup compares to the list? which has the issue I have stated here a few times.