Valve is adding framerate telemetry data to games so you can see what your hardware will manage in a given game before you buy it. The new initiative will start with the Steam Deck, but Valve has promised to bring the feature to more hardware in the future, presumably not only its Steam Machine but desktop gaming PCs more generally. The new feature shows players' average FPS on Steam Deck while playing the title, so customers can decide whether to invest without risking a purchase.
Valve already added the option to insert your hardware specifications when you write a review for a game, but an extremely small fraction of players actually write reviews, and from looking at reviews on recent Steam games, it seems like an even smaller fraction actually select to include their hardware specifications, for whatever reason.
This dialog is getting a new line to show the average frame rate of people on the same hardware as you. (Image credit: Valve)
So this is a pretty interesting idea, not least because Valve is debuting it for the Steam Deck first. Notably, the framerate data Valve is using is sourced from users who opted into sharing this data, so there's no privacy concern here. It appears to be as simple as it sounds: Valve will capture your performance while playing a game on the Steam Deck, and then show that performance to other users—anonymously, of course.
The clever among you may have realized "but wait, PC games have settings you can adjust, so even the same hardware might deliver really different performance levels." Correct! And it's also exactly why Valve is doing this. Its Steam Deck Verified program requires a certain level of performance, and games can get marked as "Unsupported" if they don't reach that level, but some people may find them playable regardless. In other words, there's no one perfect standard for "playable performance," and thus Valve wants to let users decide for themselves.
However, this histogram is also available showing you the actual data that went into making that average score. (Image credit: Valve)
Valve says that, at least for this early trial with Steam Deck data, that data is being filtered to only show data from Decks that are set to the default frame limit. The firm doesn't make any attempt to account for custom in-game settings, yet it says that "despite this, [Valve has] found that the framerate data consolidates around relatively narrow ranges," after accounting for the unusual effects of vertical sync.
The library dialog that will pop up inviting users to opt in to sharing their game performance data. (Image credit: Valve Corporation)
So what if you don't have a Steam Deck? Well, Valve says it sees this update (adding the Steam Deck framerate data) as "a stepping stone toward providing framerate data for more devices than just Steam Deck." Obviously, that includes Valve's own Steam Machine mini-desktop and Steam Frame VR headset, but presumably it will extend to folks on standard gaming PCs (whether desktop or laptop)
It's not clear whether desktop performance data will be matched by graphics card, some combination of GPU and CPU, or multiple factors, but either way, there's no question that this is yet another feature that sets Steam as a storefront above its competitors. If you'd like to opt in, you'll have to join the Steam Client Beta for now; Valve says the feature is coming to all users "in the future," though.
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Zak is a freelance contributor to Tom's Hardware with decades of PC benchmarking experience who has also written for HotHardware and The Tech Report. A modern-day Renaissance man, he may not be an expert on anything, but he knows just a little about nearly everything.
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