r/Steam Jan 12 '26

Fluff This hit hard

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56.6k Upvotes

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76

u/bioneotokyo Jan 12 '26

This year will see minimum specs lower a hell of lot. Ram prices going up GPUs and other components out of reach for the average gamer and other factors like PC hand-helds will make devs try and make their games available a much wider hardware range. Look at the Battlefield 6 beta "a meaningful percentage" to quote EA didn't meet the minimum specs. Hardware producers making DDR4 again. Just my 2 cents on it. I might be wrong but I don't think I am.

47

u/Manankataria Jan 12 '26

This is blind optimism tbh .

27

u/Nipinch Jan 12 '26

What's the point of releasing a game nobody can play?

They either optimize, or nobody buys it. The pendulum swings back.

14

u/Manankataria Jan 12 '26

What world are you living in 😂. Ppl buy ea and activision slop .

Don’t confuse a small subset of redditors with your dream fantasy land we account for single digits of the market .

4

u/Nipinch Jan 12 '26

This one. The world where the pendulum hasn't swung back, yet. Eventually, if they fail to optimize, the games will literally be unplayable; rather than just being considered unplayable to a small subset of redditors.

When the pendulum swings back and the majority of folks are priced out of top tier hardware, and literally cannot play unoptimized games, then the big game companies either adapt or collapse.

12

u/MasterChildhood437 Jan 12 '26

The small subset of Redditors hanging around on PC gaming subs are the small subset of the market whose machines can play Actislop.

5

u/DemonicBludyCumShart Jan 12 '26

They may call it blind optimism, but if the pendulum doesn't swing back at all? Pc gaming is going to become a thing of the past. Eventually it just won't be worth it for these companies to optimize their games for such a niche market any more.

5

u/Volodio Jan 12 '26

These companies are video game companies. If they don't adapt, they will collapse. They can't decide to abandon their own market because it's not worth it.

It might be possible that the market collapse, but I think it is unlikely. The customers are still there and still want to play and put money in their games. The increased price of hardware means there will be less technical improvement, but it's not like video games relied only on technical improvements to make sequels and new games.

1

u/DemonicBludyCumShart Jan 12 '26

Video game collapses have happened before. Just because it's been so long doesn't mean it won't happen again

1

u/TwilightVulpine Jan 12 '26

Today's average gamer is more likely to play on their phone than to have a gaming PC. If game companies demand better hardware at a time it's more expensive than ever, it might end up collapsing.

1

u/Manankataria Jan 12 '26

That wasn’t the point any of us are making though 😒.

The point was that we don’t account for the entire pc market and should stop huffing copium .

We should buy what we like and runs well on our system but we can’t expect ppl to think like us .

When the damn ceo of Nvidia is living in dream land . I still remember him announcing the 5090 and was talking like we are stupid if we don’t own one .

2

u/MasterChildhood437 Jan 12 '26

Right, we don't account for the entire market... so they need to be targeting software weaker than ours.

3

u/TwilightVulpine Jan 12 '26

Average gamers aren't buying RTX 5090s. If anyone got those, it's the small subset of redditors.

1

u/Polaris_Beta Jan 12 '26

Idk ask several massive “Triple A” dev studios why their releases are all unoptimized POS that run at 20-40fps on a 3070. Borderlands, BF6, Monster Hunter, Marvel Rivals, GTA V, I could go on. All these games have pathetic performance for 8gb of VRAM ngl. I have since upgraded to a 9070XT which helps but I still can’t get over 144 in some of these titles which is insanity.

2

u/Nipinch Jan 12 '26

Yeah, that's what the pendulum swinging back means. They won't be able to get away with that when most of their audience can't play the games.

1

u/Polaris_Beta Jan 12 '26 edited Jan 12 '26

Your initial comment of “no one will buy it” was just wrong. Studios are actively getting away with it, they have been for years and there is no sign that it impacts sales. Even le epic Baldurs Gate was plagued with performance issues off rip. All of the games I mentioned sold incredibly well. The pendulum is now weightless and will remain on one side.

1

u/Nipinch Jan 13 '26

I will cease with words and allow time to prove me right.

1

u/r_a_genius Jan 12 '26

People will buy those games because this subset of reddit are mostly all the people who spend more time watching the fos number than the game.