<i>&gt;&quot;is this machine actually capable of running this game?&quot; check. Non-trivial to implement, sure,</i><p>Quite trivial, actually. They already do the necessary data-gathering at your end (i.e. their periodic automated survey), the only &quot;hard&quot; bit is data-gathering at the other end (when a game is listed).<p>It&#x27;s so trivial to implement, in fact, that one has to wonder whether there are commercial considerations overriding the technical aspect. Maybe they don&#x27;t want to piss off hardware and game vendors, maybe Valve would rather have you buy their console to bypass these considerations altogether... who knows.