Steam is, most likely, going to get a lot more prophetic about how its thousands of games might run on your PC. ResetEra user dex3108 spotted, deep within the Valve app’s newest client update, a number of unused text strings relating to a “Framerate Estimator” tool. Putting aside my sadness that no-one’s ever thought to call me The Framerate Estimator, in the appropriate title case, it sounds like this would take a rough punt on how many frames per second the user’s hardware can churn out in a given game.
While such an addition hasn’t been confirmed by Gabe & Co. themselves, it was only a couple of months ago that Steam began (optionally) collecting anonymised framerate data; I still think this began with Verified programmes for the Steam Deck, Steam Machine, and Steam Frame in mind, though that data could absolutely feed a more bespoke tool like this. And serving up specific framerate ranges – even estimates – for any PC player, regardless of hardware, would take Valve’s performance previews into both much wider and much more detailed territory.
Similar tools already exist, although they haven’t thus far reached the point of outright setting FPS expectations. Certain games on the Xbox app are listed with a cheery “Should perform great on your device” if it thinks it’ll run great on your device, and they tend to include a section on general handheld compatibility as well. There’s also third-party performance checkers like the long-relied-upon stalwart Can You Run It, not to mention Steam’s existing Steam Deck and SteamOS Verified checkmarks – though none of these go into specific detail about potential framerates. The Verified programmes, in particular, give the same thumbs-up to a dipping 30fps as they do to a tungsten-solid 90fps.
The discovered strings also suggest that working out a game’s framerate estimate will involve selecting your CPU, graphics card, and RAM within the Steam client, rather than having to download and run an executable – arguably a preferable method for the privacy-inclined.
If or when this Framerate Estimator ultimately makes it to Steam is still guesswork, at this point. But even if the Steam Machine’s delay stretches on for many more months, this already sounds like a useful little feature that could be launched in the meantime. It would probably doom my own attempts at winning the title, but fine, fine, I’ll take one for the team.
