Steam Hardware Survey shows big changes after Valve fixes counting
Game development requires a careful balance between keeping system requirements low enough to make the product accessible to a wide range of players while incorporating attention-getting features and a helping of eye candy. Steam's Hardware Survey is one of the tools that coders can use to make sure their software targets the the right hardware specs. The latest round of stats has some pretty big changes, but the wildest swings probably come from a correction in the way Steam counts internet cafi(C) machines operated by many users. As it turns out, the last few months of stats may not have been entirely reliable.
The latest results come with a note explaining that the figures started changing in unexpected ways back in August of last year. Valve's engineers thought it had taken measures that would prevent PCs from net cafi(C)s from being counted multiple times, but the way administrators tend to those systems inadvertently circumvented Valve's workarounds. The company says it has taken these details into account and that the latest results are ...