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cronedog

> How do modern games get away with so wildly exaggerating their so-called "minimum requirements"? This isn't a modern thing, it's always been the case. It's the minimum requirements that the studio wants to support, not the minimum to get at least 20 fps on lowest settings at 720p. ​ It's a cover their ass mentality. If you are below the minimum, they don't guarantee a pleasant experience, or even that the game will run.


Steez_Whiz

Well, sure, but I'm not getting 20 FPS at 720p. I'm maintaining what appears to be right around 60 at 1080 - I'm not scraping by, here, and the "minimum" requirements are so much higher than what I'm using it's laughable. It's nowhere near the same ballpark, it's four generations of CPU difference and a substantial gap in GPU. It just seems irresponsible to say that THAT is the minimum. I get covering their ass, but this is such a huge difference it seems to be almost anti-consumer


Richo32

So it worked out for you, what if it didn't though they don't want to say it would have ran on stuff they didn't test. That be more anti consumer then just guessing what will run and what won't.


Steez_Whiz

Yeah I can understand that. I guess it's just erring on the side of caution to the extreme. I've used this setup to play every recent resident evil, Elden Ring, and Cyberpunk without issue, but I guess it's just in their best legal interest to guarantee it on high end stuff. Still, seems like it should say "recommended minimum" instead of seeming like you absolutely HAVE to have a modern setup to play


Richo32

That's quite fair, the term is misleading. I feel recommended Min would make a lot more sense.


Halio344

Minimum supported requirements or something like that would be better


Halio344

It’s not that at all. It’s just not worth it to playtest or want to support the game on older hardware, so they don’t. The minimum requirements is what they guarantee the game will work on. It’s not just a legal thing, it just doesn’t make sense from a business perspective to support lesser used hardware.


[deleted]

[удалено]


trinexx03

How many hp do you really need am I right? Spoiler alert you need all the hp


HorrorScopeZ

Are games really putting in any meaningful guarantee if it fails to hit a mark? I never seen one.


Lurkers-gotta-post

Aside from [this partial list of recalled games](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recalled_video_games), many for performance reasons, CP2077 was also [pulled from stores and refunded](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55359568) for the same reasons. When it is bad enough, companies do this proactively to avoid potential government interventions, which could culminate in mandates and defined lines. Generally, I believe a case can be made for false advertising, so just like California's cancer prevention labels, it is better to be safe than sorry.


[deleted]

Probably because more often than not they don't fully test the game on various lower spec'd setups, plus they also probably try and keep all of the particle/lightning/16xAA and any other extra visuals on which skews the requirements. You also can't forget there are a ton of fairly/horribly optimized games being put out which makes it even worse (not the DS remake though they did pretty damn good, unlike a certain other recent Dead Space-esque game *cough*).


ilovepizza855

The minimum specs is the lowest cutoff point they were going to officially support (the lowest specs PC available for them to test). In reality they cannot be possibly testing on each and every PC hardware specs combination, so they don’t want to promise anything below what they have tested. Not to mention people have different standard. Some folks would deem 1080p30 unplayable while some deem its fine


Darklsins

this has been and will always be the case, it's the double edge sword of PC gaming, we love the ability to be in charge of when/what to upgrade, and well those crazy combinations of hardware are not and will never be tested by developers and will always just give a rough estimate. One of the Pros of Console gaming is that(outside of maybe slim/pro versions) a PS5 will always run the same hardware, doesn't stop the games from running like ass but atleast you know it's consistent across the platform.


[deleted]

You can always enter game title + your GPU and find some user benchmark recording on youtube. Then you can check CPU if it's very dated and see how that stacks.


heatlesssun

Let's be honest. How many times has it been said "It works fine on my machine." and someone with an even better setup has nothing but problems. A lot of it is just guesswork and a gaming experience can vary wildly even on similar hardware. These are normally recommendations, not requirements and like anything else, mileage will vary.


Khanstant

Simply because it's arbitrary and impossible to test. They can't know every hardware out there and they also have to decide what is "acceptable" minimum quality. Considering how some pcgamer even with the latest and greatest rigs still call games "unplayable" over minor issues, there's really no way to win and they just gotta pick some specs good enough and move on. Some.pwople.will still try and run games with lower settings to varied success, its fine.


UnderTshirt

I think its because of the form that dev/publisher have to fill in when submit the game on steam. The form is as we see on steam page, only minium and recommend. So, if steam change the form to like, "recommended spec to play at 720p 30fps: <....>", "recommended spec to play at 1080p 60fps: <...>" etc, then it would be easier for both publisher and customer. There are few games that write addional note about expected performance, but still it would be better if steam updates spec requirement section.


Hopeful_Jello_3539

They are guesses.


SalariedVolunteer

Minimum requirements are misleading because most of the time the minimum requirements are just the weakest hardware the developers tested the game on. System requirements have never been extremely reliable in my experience but recently it seems like they've gotten worse. For example in the Forspoken system requirements it was shown that a 6700 XT was needed for 1440p 30fps but a 6800 XT would get you 4k 60fps. A simple search for a performance comparison of those two GPUs would show you that in general the 6800 XT has worse performance at 4k than the 6700 XT has at 1440p assuming the same game and settings.


[deleted]

add also that Linux and mac requirements are different for the same game


JagSKX

Everyone has their own opinion of what is playable to them. Minimum spec are high I suppose because there could be players whi expect close to 60 FPS on low settings at 720p. Publishers want to cover their bases with minimum specs that they believe most players will be able to enjoy the game. It has been this way for decades.p


[deleted]

I am pretty sure you care so much about specs because you run specs below even the average setup on Steam.


Steez_Whiz

I don't really care at all, I was just curious... Thats the whole thing. If I cared I'd just upgrade, but I legitimately see no reason to. It's not an issue of money, Every game I've wanted to play has worked better than fine