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Steam added the option to attach hardware specs when writing or updating a Steam User Review
(lemmy.ml)
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this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2026
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Kinda needs to be default. I mean, I'm a privacy buff, and I don't care if you know my raw specs if I'm telling you how a game runs in a public forum. Because without the specs, that information is worthless.
Even if we anonymise the specs and just say "this user has a more powerful rig than you do," that tells me I can disregard their claim the game runs good. But if it says "this user has a less powerful rig than you do," I can take that review more seriously. And if I can hover over it and see exactly where my rig is better or worse comparatively, that matters too. I don't need to know what the specs are because we have benchmarks that place numerical values on performance based on different parts. So we can directly compare the performance of my M2 Pro (Mac mini) with 16GB RAM to, say, a 10th generation i7 with 32GB of RAM and a 1080. They win on RAM, I probably win on CPU (at least single core, they might have me on multi), and the GPU is kinda up in the air. On one hand, they have a dedicated graphics card. On the other, mine's way newer. So it's hard to guess. However, I could look it up on Geekbench and tell you exactly which part wins and by how much.
Brainstorming: maybe make it mandatory only when a review is about performance of the game, because that's when it's relevant. Maybe a checkbox as you're writing a negative review that's something like 'what aspect(s) of the game don't you like', and if 'performance' is checked, a little addendum that says 'your specs will be added to the review to give context'. In that case, people who want to look through reviews would also be able to filter by those same 'types' of reviews, or see what percentage of negative reviews are due to performance, or other things. Could be a good addition overall.
But generally, if someone wants to write a bad review because of shitty controls, or plot, or the game being too short for its price, etc., there's no need to have specs attached to that kind of review.
I'm against sharing privacy information by default. This has to be opt-in. Also a review without specs is not worthless. All the years I found the reviews without specs still helpful in Steam. Having specs gives a little bit information, especially important when you want to understand some performance or compatibility issues. But most reviews don't need that.
As a matter of general principle, I agree with you. That said, I never opt in to writing public reviews on store websites to begin with, both because I don't care to give free labor to for-profit corporations, and more importantly, because disclosing my consumer preferences is already a privacy risk in and of itself.
Agreed. Generally, I don't play high-end graphically intense games. It'd be nice to know for some games, but generally a review is useful without it
It may not be harmful by itself, but combined with other information it can definitely help identify you to your account. It could easily be the final piece of information that enabled you to be doxxed.
Loss of privacy is cumulative, like radiation.
Not to mention certain hardware level vulnerabilities like Heartbleed.
I don't care about benchmarks; I care about compatibility and errors. The specs that would matter to me would be things like CPU architecture, which team made the GPU, and which Linux distro they're running. Maybe number of monitors/resolution/framerate/use of freesync or framegen, too, since that can affect glitches.
That's fair, but I think it's a different argument. Benchmarks are an easy solution to the problems I presented. Your situation is a bit more niche, and while there should be a way to identify and track more niche hardware/software setups, I'm not sure a casual review saying "runs great on my rig" is exactly the place for it.
Conversely, I would think people who do use niche gaming setups (like gaming on Mac, for instance... or Linux) would be more than happy to share the details of their setup to help others as they would want to be helped.
Right, "more powerful" or "less powerful" are completely meaningless without context. E.g.: hollow knight has some serious bugs on the controller input (for some popular controllers like 8bit do ones) on the Linux version due to some outdated version of a library they use on some input modes. Silksong doesn't even register the inputs for that same setup. Both work perfectly on proton with the she hardware. Drivers and software play a more important role in playability than raw specs and benchmarks.
The problem with that is, this is highly dependent on the settings you set to play the game. Your system may have 4k, but you maybe play the game at 1080p with upscaling and RayTracing enabled. I mean this is just an example. Therefore it could be misleading information for many. There is a reason why even Protondb doesn't list that. In my initial reply and suggestion here I excluded stuff like refresh rate and resolution for that reason.